Paul Harding

This Other Eden

taylor miles hopkins

The family condensing, imploding, fewer and fewer people, becoming heavier and heavier, until one last woman would stand, dark and wholly compacted, herself begat, she her own mother. She her own daughter and sister, all in her one, impossibly condensed and sorrowful body, leaden and involute so when she lay down to die no one would need to bury her. 

WOW—spoken by Zachary Hand to God Proverbs

That’s right; I am queer, from queer folk, queer stock. The very queerest. Here we are, stuck on an island, a hollow, a swamp, the desert, no sooner settled than banished again. You bet I’m queer. I’m no landlord or lawyer, no duke nor lord of the looms. I'm no cap dofer, no knee bender, no flattering stooge. I draw no writs; I pass no judgments. I set no seals. I tip no scales. No, not me; I'm queer. I'm queer for my self, for my selfhood, queer for this queer self I find myself to be, queer with strange appetites, and a heart that throbs most queerly. I'm queer for other queers, queer for their shapes and colors and sizes, queer for their tastes. I'm queer for the ruthless sea. I'm queer for all the little queer creatures in the tide pools. I'm queer for the light when it breaks the horizon and queer for it when it sinks behind the trees. I'm plain queer for these people and queer for this world. I'm downright queer in love with this wreck of a world, queer in love with love itself—love's always queer, always arriving in our hearts from queer nowheres, queering everything—and there we are; wide awake all night, queer as queer can be; queer orphans, queer widows, queer boys, and queer girls; sorrel girls queer for ivory boys, daffodil boys queer for lilac girls; carmine girls queer for sable girls, cinnamon boys so very queer for boys of bluest milk. 

Wicked shepherds! Burn me at the stake and hang me from a tree. Clap in the stocks; send me down the mine; set me in the burning fields. But I am queer. And I say, Here is water, bread, a dull penny. Here's my old shirt, my plane and hammer, a roof I'll help you raise above your head. Here is my queer old body, in a barn, behind a hedge, beneath a shadow, a bare pallet—quick—while the murderous king still sleeps. Here is a song, a painting, a jig and a reel. Here is an island for an apple, an orchard for an eye. Here is a single, perfect apple for an island.

I've seen flowers that red, he said. Strawberries. Cherries. But everything in the world changes colors every second.

Why don't the stars make any sounds in the winter? Bridget said. 

Their chirping sounds. They only make that sound in the summer.

Ethan was confused for a moment then understood. He answered, I'm not sure. I've wondered about that. I've wondered whether they do make the same sound but their voices somehow get swallowed up in the cold on their way here, or whether they lose their voices in the winter, or whether they change their voices so that we can't hear them but other animals can, or other people on different planets. 

What kind of world would that be, in which a shadow was composed of the same stuff as the girl who cast it, and the blueberries she ate the same stuff as she?

Christy du Preez

Other ideas still, though, were darker, underwater, or he underwater and they above the surface, clear and sharp and focused. He could hear them in his head, feel their weight in his chest and their shapes in his throat, but he was slow of tongue and they went unworded. He knew everyone had the same kind of ideas, but that his thoughts outdistanced his words sooner than with other people- even the words for what he meant when he thought about this hovered above the water- dark, familiar circling birds he could not name. 

Beautifully written, incredibly poetic. Impressive method of switching POVs often without causing confusion and really feeling conceptually intentional. Will tear out your insides. Some of the most powerful samples of prose I’ve read in a while. 

Chris Dailey

Magical realism meets race relations and eugenics in the US. Based loosely on a real island off the coast of Maine where freed slaves intermarried with Irish immigrant in the 19th century, a family is torn apart by misguided and/or malicious intentions from locals. Race and family are the prominent themes along with community, care, education vs intelligence, religion and modernity peppered throughout. Touchingly sad with deep tenderness and low key world building on the fictional island. For a lighter book, it took unusual focus to follow the flowery, and at times, gorgeous prose.

This Other Eden

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