Somebody reminded us earlier today of just how much we love reading Unsaid Magazine and the works culled together by editor, David McLendon. One thing we love about a new issue of Unsaid is being fairly certain we'll get to see new work from some "regulars" like Brian Evenson, Peter Markus, Pamela Ryder, M. Sarki, Ottessa Moshfegh (with Unsaid being the FIRST place I read her work), and many more. Another thing though is the excitement of reading the words of authors whose bios note that this is their first publication, because David unearths some fantastic new writers as well.
Such is the case in issue V7N1 (which has been out for some time now) with Beth Imes. Imes sees her debut short story, "Hush," published in this issue and it's just about halfway through this brick of a literary journal (just over 300 pages in total). It's a flash fiction, a little under 3 pages long (though Unsaid always seems to get a little more on each page than your standard literary journal).
To us, some writers find a topic to hammer on over their career, and some find themselves with similar features eve in wildly different books (Brian Evenson has a lot of one-named protagonists, for instance). Others find words that become engines for their work. An early example of this to the EWN was the poet Steve Scafidi Jr., who in his debut used the word "and" as a means of propelling his poems forward. Another obvious one to readers of this site is Peter Markus--brother, mud, river, fish, moon all come to mind through his fiction, especially the short stories. We knew it going into this story, but would not have been surprised at all to have found out after reading, "Hush," but Imes has does some work on her writing with Markus. This isn't to say her work is mimicking his, not at all, but there are aspects of it that do remind us of Markus' work. Reading this story aloud, we found ourselves having a very similar vocal/breathing/speech pattern as we do when reading Markus aloud--each word placed just so within each sentence in a manner that nudges the reader forward.
Imes might have her own set of words--more stories will tell that tale--with sister and mother both having a very high frequency in this short. An example from the middle of this short:
When that baby was born, I got a new name: Sister. The baby, I named Sister too. When Sister came home, I held her like a fresh loaf of bread, all wrapped up and warm. Sister smelled like powder and milk and like Mother too.
Beyond the words, these also form a topic, one that can provide numerous situations, story lines, conflicts, and more, so here's hoping that Imes continues in this vein as she writes in the future.
This is an excellent debut from an author we hope to see more from in the future.
Thank you for your kind words and your support Dan! You are right, I am very much influenced by the repetitive and lyrical style of Peter Markus...and also Michael Kimball. Thanks again, I'm honored to be featured here.
Posted by: karminstant | October 18, 2018 at 09:55 PM