The night refills itself.
Limestone drops to the sea
that varies blue all day
between capes that curve
like a lover’s arms
to cherish tranquil waters.
Here on a stone bench
we can see the darkening
bay, its almost-still
soft skin. This morning
we drove among rock
villages and orchards
to visit Matisse's Chapel
with its carnal blues
and yellows. Underneath
our room an olive's
roots draw virgin oil
from the earth's body,
surging upward to leaves
silvery green and dark.
After siesta we throbbed
with the olive's thrust
and our bodies floated
as buoyant as the sea
that rolls inside us
tonight. Our joyous
flesh sighs, every cell
breathing gaily, alert
to storeys of pastel
stucco with tile roofs
and filigreed balconies,
Aisha Sabatini Sloan
Episode 22: “Form and Formlessness”
In an essay specially commissioned for the podcast, Aisha Sabatini Sloan describes rambling around Paris with her father, Lester Sloan, a longtime staff photographer for Newsweek, and a glamorous woman who befriends them. In an excerpt from The Art of Fiction no. 246, Rachel Cusk and Sheila Heti discuss how writing her first novel helped Cusk discover her “shape or identity or essence.” Next, Allan Gurganus’s reading of his story “It Had Wings,” about an arthritic woman who finds a fallen angel in her backyard, is interspersed with a version of the story rendered as a one-woman opera by the composer Bruce Saylor. The episode closes with “Dear Someone,” a poem by Deborah Landau.
Rachel Cusk photo courtesy the author.
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