The Rialto Books Review vol.010
The Rialto Books Review vol.010 is now available and can be purchased here.
The Rialto Books Review vol.010 includes Veritas! Act I Scenes III, IV and Act II by Russell Block and The Loft Apartment by E.L. Hugh.
Veritas! Act I Scene III by Russell Block
Jefferies. Woah, nelly! Woah, my trusted steed! My powers articulate more than the pirate ever of the topsail a shanty sang, more than the driver his engine praised, the wizard the whip of arbor waved, more even do I articulate than the dauphin did of his own fine steed. I say, as in this clearing, we circle, slow, and fade in ardor; betimes it creeps toward a death, I feel the more composed. My path resides along no paved road or well-hewn trail, but forward is my path, ever forward! Race no more; but let me retire you under my gaberdine. Well I do remember the joy a student of the physical sciences derived pedaling you to classes. We did fly upon the translation of force to velocity, and mayhaps this will disguise you of interests if I do, by need, or enlightened, return from my new dominion. Why, a boulder it will be. It looks very much a bolder! Already I am an acolyte study of this great thing nature. I am not one for occasions, and I tremble for speeches to be made, but that will do.
The Loft Apartment
by E.L. Hugh
Anticipation keeps him from falling back to sleep when the gentle, two-part chime wakes him. A pixelated image of a clock radiating thunderbolts offers about as much distraction from the task at hand as his new phone can offer. Anticipation to get started on the task at hand grows and grows, such that the ideas that possess him, the figures he would like to start his day drawing, the colors realize, populate his intention for canvas and brush, and lead nowhere. Lightning bolts strike the pixelated image of an agitated desk clock. A silenced speaker renders those bells merely ornamental as the body vibrates on the floorboards, ineffectually, and the device’s intended effect on the world outside the dimensions of the screen is nil. If the old roommates knew of how, on the first morning wherein he was to prove his intentions good, X. simply fell back to sleep, like he was famous for doing when at school, they would relish in the idea that they were right from the get. X. is going nowhere. The contradictions of a young man who admired man’s greatest efforts in pain but whose own efforts consisted of great, yawning exhalations of breath and sniveling intakes of breath while elsewhere his professors lectured or classmates nervously scribbled their answers to exams did not inspire confidence. No note of the old roommate’s ridicule haunts his dreaming.
