The Rialto Books Review Vol. 017 -- AVAILABLE NOW
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The Rialto Books Review Vol. 017 includes Color Between Blood and Purple by Brendan Mitchell, The Dearborns pt. 7 by Alexandra Ranieri, and An Island Song and Coda as well as The Sally Scenes III-IV by Russell Block.
Color Between Blood and Purple
by Brendan Mitchell
All I tell them is: it’s easy. As the moon is the moon is. Colors reflect from some light strewn something — and all you have to do is look. Maybe it’s not obvious, maybe it shouldn’t be. I tell them, “Try thinking about the things that make you choke, start there.” And they giggle and scoff. They begin to doodle. My ideas trail off to a ramble, I get sleepy, it’s easy. I tell them, as the moon is the moon is.
But before the alter or the interviews I was often in two places. Like when I had my job over there. All day dusting gold specks and slivers from my green work dress, I’d be halfway here and nowhere. Disassociating.
The Dearborns
by Alexandra Ranieri
In the drabbest boardroom, in the ugliest office building, in the most mall-infested, highway-ridden, despair-mongering suburb of Chicago, Charles Luddington, Esq., LL.M., prepared to read a will. At a grand seventy-five years of age, he was beginning to turn one ear to his wife’s pleas for him to retire; and, indeed, he would usually forego such theatricals as an in-person reading; but this will marked the end of an era in his life, the which door he could not in good conscience allow to close, without himself easing it into its frame. For it was not only in his life, but in his father’s life, that Mr. Dearborn and Dearborn & Sons had played a part; three generations of men bearing that name had hardly walked an inch without sending first Andrew, and now Charles Luddington, Esq., LL.M, some document or other to look over. Three generations of signatures had kept the Luddingtons working long into three generations of nights; two birth certificates had been filed, three social security numbers memorized, five weddings notarized and, as of today, three wills would have been read.
An Island Song and Coda
by Russell Block
From the outset of untarnished memory, the wrath of the sun exacted itself upon my skin too fair, and years of peeling and newly forming layers slowly made me immune to its effect. The island sustained me as it had sustained my family for many generations, but it was imperative that I learn which trees were strongest, which fronds caught the most wind, and how best to fashion bindings from bark. All my enterprise would bring together a raft able to withstand the wrath of a wide ocean. This being done in accordance with island propriety left me with a staggering conveyance and no reason to long delay. Waving farewell to the two figures standing in the doorway of our thatched-roof hut, the only such hut I ever knew, I pushed the creation from sand to foam. They receded into the interior of that island home as I progressed and became subject to wind and wave.
The Sally
by Russell Block
Scene III
Edison. What a treat this looks. Our schedule is maintained by no outward marker. Only the gut decides the hours so far spent, but methinks the torpid orb is at its most fiery pitch; and we have yet to get to the pitch and tar.
Bertrand. Some of you, I refuse to name who, could I tar and feather.
Francis. It is hard to know what smells worse, us, or whatever is this dish. What is this dish?
Bertrand. Remember, Francis, although I know how mightily you struggle in that regard, what time you used to show up for your labors, and what misgivings we expressed about you, when you make a show of all that you consider beneath you. Were it not for our generosity, you would have no share in these proceedings; just imagine where you might be besides our table.
Francis. Do what you will, but do not share this foul lunch with me. Starving is preferable, and I regret the day I ever showed up before noon; such a spread I used to enjoy at home. That is where I would be, dining in vegan luxury.
Edison. There is no fowl in this brown bag, save for what thought might make of it. In wizarding might I make this fine white, whose usage lightens grandma’s china cabinet, into a form that fits the foul description fowl.
Scene IV
Alana. What is there in this world or the next that should give cause to jealousy? All is ease, at last, at last; and all it took was another scorcher for you to lend your ears to my industrious piping about lethargy.
Francis. What was that?
Alana. O, Francis, you are an incurable tease. Let that, too, be abandoned, and abandon yourself to me.
Francis. I kid you not, kid. My dealer, and my phone vicariously, had my attention undivided.
Alana. How dare you give your regard to a contrivance over me? I am a world unto myself deserving of attention.
Francis. That, indeed, albeit rarely for what you say. What did you say?
Bertrand. She said she is frivolous as the tools at our disposal and speaks for all of you in that respect. Why does this drill not work for all the power in these walls?
Francis. Go climb your own tree, if even branch would have you. Some of us have lovers to enjoy, as branches do buds, or branches fruit, and cannot suffer another lest the bow breaks and treat of you like a chrisom child.
