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Aaron Peck
Aaron Peck is the author of The Bewilderments of Bernard Willis and Letters to the Pacific.

Articles Available Online


The Abyss Echoes Back: Judith Schalansky’s ‘An Inventory of Losses’

Book Review

January 2021

Aaron Peck

Book Review

January 2021

Early in Judith Schalansky’s An Inventory of Losses, the narrator describes the way an ancient form of writing survived oblivion. The soft clay tablets...

Book Review

May 2018

Harry Mathews’s ‘The Solitary Twin’

Aaron Peck

Book Review

May 2018

Imagine a small fishing village on the edge of the world. Its inhabitants are progressive and content. The surroundings...

INTERROGATION (1)     Are you a witch?   Are you   Have you had relations with the devil?   Have you   Have you had relations with the devil and what took place?   I kissed him under the tail, it was a bit like soil, a bit like road tar when it heats up, he was flickering in pleasure, the field would be just the same when I tongue that, the bird’s feathers parting   What knowledge did the devil give you?   I built a house next to the sea, the roof is red/orange, the sky is a shaking plate of light peeling you back, there is grass out the front, some metal bins, you can see a lighthouse I began to sleep with the windows open, I began to creep along the bed to my own globe face in the mirror Sitting rubbed up in myself is this fierce fire, it does not come from me, even the stones in the drive are crackling with it   What did the devil make you do under his control?   His mother had just died We ate mint ice cream by the coffin, he was missing her, my sock was loose, we kept laughing   What is magic?   Picture an egg yolk, that huge yellow throw up sun Dementedly shining, falling out of itself, birthed and reverent   What is magic?    Little cracks coming in, small flaws in the glass, and the air slapping itself, you stand on a hill, things are mainly green and breakable, you think ok I’m not alone, but mainly, ok I was never alone, on a far off hill the earth is breaking up against the gas pressure of the sun, if there was ever anything to miss this is what you miss, how it’s beginning   What crimes have you enacted?   Love makes me forget myself sometimes I am horribly angry, I am sick with it, my vomit turns black, but this love I can’t explain it, beyond that it is exactly   What other witches/sorcerers have you conjured with?   S couldn’t eat The food was poor and cheap but not that She had these violet eyes   Have you taken black mass?   I’ve wondered why things turn Rustling and fluttering cells, the nib of the chest where what you might call soul slides out and enters a hyena fucking happily amongst the fruit rinds   What did the devil

Contributor

May 2017

Aaron Peck

Contributor

May 2017

Aaron Peck is the author of The Bewilderments of Bernard Willis and Letters to the Pacific.

Gloria

fiction

May 2017

Aaron Peck

fiction

May 2017

Bernard, whenever he thought of Geoffrey, would remember his gait on the afternoon of their first meeting. Geoffrey walked with the confidence of a...

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poetry

Issue No. 13

Morning, Noon & Night

Claire-Louise Bennett

poetry

Issue No. 13

Sometimes a banana with coffee is nice. It ought not to be too ripe – in fact there should...

Prize Entry

April 2016

clerical error

Victoria Manifold

Prize Entry

April 2016

Due to a clerical error on my part, the current Prime Minister is now living in the box room...

Art

Issue No. 17

Water

Batia Suter

Art

Issue No. 17

Sources: Achate, Bilder im Stein / Josef Arnoth, Naturhistorisches Museum Basel Buchverlag, Bild der Wissenschaft 12, Dezember 1971, DVA StuttgartBasler Zeitung, Birkhäuser...

 

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