Once again the exquisite skies of Fall transform the visuals here in Santa Fe every morning and afternoon. All I want to do is take photos of sky and clouds. Here is one I would like to share:
And on that note, I wanted to share a video that Christopher Allen found and has passed around on FB. Something that can’t help but make you happy. I have now watched it every morning for a week and it never ceases to amaze and captivate. I hope it will do the same for you:
And I will follow up with a poetic beauty for inspiration:
My Gipsy Days, by Arthur Rimbaud
“Off I would go, with fists into torn pockets pressed.
My overcoat became a wrap of mystery.
Under the great sky, Muse, I was your devotee.
Eh, what fine dreams I had, each one an amorous gest!
My only trousers gaped behind; and thus I went
Tom Thumb the dreamer, husking out some lyric line.
My nightly inn had always the Great Bear for sign.
My stars moved with a silken rustle of content.
And often, sitting by the roadside, I would listen,
On calm September evenings, with fine dew a-glisten
Upon my brow, like drops of cordial, sweet yet tart;
Where, rhyming in these shadowy, fantastic places,
As if I played a lyre, I’d gently pluck the laces
Of my burst boots, one foot hugged tight against my heart!”
Kelcey Parker is one of two outstanding featured fiction writers for the mid-September issue with her elusive and magnificent tale, “The Most Secret Things,” and in our interview she shares what she is working on, her award-winning novella, “Liliane’s Balcony,” and many other exceptional sides of Kelcey, as well.
Sara Henning is also a featured fiction writer for this issue. Please read her three flash beauties, “Marilyn,” “My Grandfather’s Photographs,” and “April Pastoral With Lapsed Engine and Love From Minnesota.” Powerful and inimitable! “She’s a bivouac stitched into marquisette, not a schooner glittering over a siege of water.” And find out more about her in our interview.
Zach Williams delivers his story, “Pedestal.” Competition at its most extreme where “every breath feels like I'm sucking wind through a straw,” and coming to terms with one’s bodily and psychological limitations.
Burgess Needle gives us a glimpse of his life in Thailand with this visceral story, “A Special Meal With Sook.” It was taking a trip and I was hungry reading this one. Okay, maybe not from the last one he ate, but....“Had he heard his words correctly? Did he really say "meat?" Thai was a tonal language that often led Harry through weird semantic landscapes.”
Thank you so much to all these boundless writers who have sent some of their exquisite work to Connotation Press.
I hope you have time to soak in the landscape, wherever you are, sit on a porch or the grass and read each one of these mesmerizing stories. Cheers, and happy Fall!