I know this really isn’t Spain. But still,
You’d think I’d find my father here, his lips
On every cup. You’d think the holly bush
Weren’t quite so sharp. I think Rumanian
Is coming from my favorite table in
The back. Are all these people reading Lorca?
My Father never orders flan. I have
Café con leche. I’m in Santander,
Before the war. These people reading Lorca
Suspect that he’s a Communist. You’d think
The Germans at the table in the back
Would carry out their spying more discreetly.
Aisha Sabatini Sloan
Episode 22: “Form and Formlessness”
In an essay specially commissioned for the podcast, Aisha Sabatini Sloan describes rambling around Paris with her father, Lester Sloan, a longtime staff photographer for Newsweek, and a glamorous woman who befriends them. In an excerpt from The Art of Fiction no. 246, Rachel Cusk and Sheila Heti discuss how writing her first novel helped Cusk discover her “shape or identity or essence.” Next, Allan Gurganus’s reading of his story “It Had Wings,” about an arthritic woman who finds a fallen angel in her backyard, is interspersed with a version of the story rendered as a one-woman opera by the composer Bruce Saylor. The episode closes with “Dear Someone,” a poem by Deborah Landau.
Rachel Cusk photo courtesy the author.
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