From Words to Canvas

Just added to Issue 20 is "The Painting" by Jacqueline Powers. This is the third story of Jaquie's that I've selected for STORYGLOSSIA. Her story Green Pants and Lavender Golf Carts appeared in Issue 8 and "Life Class" appeared in Issue 13. What I enjoy most about her writing is the way she captures mood. And you feel it right here in the first paragraph:

Dara stood before the open window, almost invisible in the dark. She held the paintbrush in her hand, brushing the sable bristles against the sharp angle of her jaw. Down her throat. The air was heavy with salt, the sea a black canvas flecked with gold. She watched as waves dipped and rolled. The moon looked ready to fall into the ocean, fat and succulent. She imagined it beckoning beneath the sea.

It's not just mood that drives this story, however, but the grit of a relationship gone sour:

She tried not to pull away. Nonetheless something showed in his face. His eyes, almost black in the moonlight. She wondered why she had let him come back.

As you might expect with a story about painting, metaphor is prominent, and yet, despite being expected, the primary metaphor comes naturally from within the story, which is a difficult feat to pull off and a reason that I admire this story.

Jacqueline Powers is an unconsummated novelist with a short attention span and love of words. Her poems have been published in canwehaveourballback, [plug].poetry, Delirium Journal, kaleidowhirl, Poesia, Chronogram, and California Quarterly. Her play, "Swimming Upstream," was produced in Ithaca, N.Y. Two of her stories have previosuly appeared in STORYGLOSSIA: Green Pants and Lavender Golf Carts in Issue 8 and "Life Class" in Issue 13.