Richard Rodriguez (piqued my interest) From "Mexico's Children"
M.J. Iuppa Daylight Savings Time
This reads like straight poetry, abstract and lyrical. I'm not going to act like I completely have a handle on it, because I spent most of my time reading this just admiring sentences and thoughts and fragments and phrases. "watching the highway lines breaking up like Morse code." She compares shutting a door to the flick of a Zippo lighter. I think the title is a play on that phrase, saving as in preserving in mind, not turning back the clock (though I know the author wishes she could relive it). There's almost no general detail about the relationship, just the wildly specific, but I envy this sylvan and inherently natural passion of both the affair and the writer's voice. And I mean natural as close as possible to the root of the word, the intended meaning, nature-al.
I think this sounds interesting though if you didn't have a complete handle on it I probably won't either. I've read a couple of essays in Short Takes (but especially in the anthology we have) that have been kind of difficult to pick apart. But even just for the beautiful writing and the nature-al aspect of it I will definitely give it a look.
ReplyDeleteI also read this one for one of my short takes but chose not to write about it because, just like you, I'm don't completely "get" it. I really like the lines "Staring straight ahead, you saw the windswept trees and fields hanging on to skeletons of milkweed, and bristles of burdock made everything he said sadder. Things were sticking to you." The external, natural use of burdock as description of sight and then the idea that things "stuck" to her is subtly clever.
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