In Love with Eva

by Bacopa Literary Review Editor-in-Chief Mary Bast

When novelists are also poets, we are not surprised to find their fiction writing particularly lyrical. The work of Michael Ondaatje (The English Patient) is described as "for the eye and the ear simultaneously," Alice Walker's writing (The Color Purple) is "passionate, political, personal, and poetic," Russell Bank's The Sweet Hereafter is "beautiful enough to be considered poetry," and Margaret Atwood's writing (The Handmaid's Tale ) pulls "towards art on the one hand, and towards life on the other."

It's no surprise, then, that Joseph Saling, our 2016 Fiction Runner-Up Prize-Winner, is also a poet (see A Matter of Mind, Foothills Publishing). With only a few excerpts from "Eva," you can begin to appreciate Saling's melodic writing, compelling story, and beautifully drawn characters:

... I first saw her in my father's ceramic art class. He sometimes took me to the studio, and I would sit at a table with the mostly middle-aged women, playing with a ball of clay that I alternately dipped in a bowl of water and squished in my hands. The women thought I was cute, and nearly every one found a reason to touch me at some point during the evening's class. I remember most as being round and smelling like kitchens.

Eva was different... She was tall, angular not round, and while the others seemed familiar, like aunts, Eva was distant. I thought she must be a queen, and the strange angularity of her accent only enhanced the idea... Her clothes were silky, and when I could, I'd get next to her just to touch her skirt. I was fascinated by her long red hair and slender fingers, and if it's possible a five-year-old could be in love, I was in love with Eva.

... There are two stairways to the second floor--one in the front of the house and one in back. The door to Eva's room is exactly half way along the hall between them. Opposite the room's open door, sunlight streams through windows on either side of a fireplace, and a canopied bed dominates the center of the room, carvings of naked women wrapping themselves about its posts. Eva leads me to the bed and unsnaps my bow tie. "You're such a handsome boy," she says, sitting with her hands flat on either side of her. "I'm going to change. You undress, and when I come back, we'll try on your new clothes. Get undressed."

... while I was in the middle of my second divorce, at the urging of my therapist, I sent my parents a letter. It contained just one question: "Are you my biological parents?" My father answered. "I assure you that you are my son." My therapist thought it a strange response, and as we explored what it could mean, Eva began to grow in my memory.

... We eat breakfast at the table beside her window. There are bowls of strawberries, sweet cereals floating in milk, jams in jars without labels, hot breads on which the butter melts in golden pools, and fat oranges that Eva peels and separates and lays on my plate...

You can read the full story of Joseph Saling's "Eva" in Bacopa Literary Review 2016, follow Joe's blog The New Word Mechanic, and see more of his work online at Blue Lake Review. Other links to Joe's work include a Review of A Matter of Mind (Expansive Poetry), "The Eye in the Sky" (The Innisfree Poetry Journal), "Captain Lee" (The Chimera, Issue 6, Feature Theme: Well-Wrought Form), and an earlier blog, The Word Mechanic: The Grandpa explores a life working with words).

Winning Faces

Bacopa Literary Review 2016 Prize Winners

FIRST PRIZE

Fiction: Afia Atakora for "The Crooked Man"

Afia Atakora is currently earning her MFA at Columbia University. She lives in Avenel, New Jersey, where she is at work on a novel about a reconstruction-era midwife.

Poetry: Carolyne Wright for "Sestina: That Mouth..."

Carolyne Wright's most recent book is the anthology, Raising Lilly Ledbetter: Women Poets Occupy the Workspace (Lost Horse Press, 2015). This anthology is the recipient of ten Pushcart Prize nominations and is a finalist in The Foreword Review's Book of the Year Awards. Wright has nine other poetry volumes and five volumes of poetry in translation, and received a Pushcart Prize in 2010. Since 2005, when she returned to her native Seattle, she has taught for the Whidbey Writers Workshop MFA Program and for Richard Hugo House.

Nonfiction: Jessica Conoley for "I Am Descended From Giants"

Jessica Conoley was raised on 80's action films, Jem and the Holograms, X-Men, and big-brother-mandated Star Wars. Decades later she started writing fantasy novels, flash fiction, and essays. In 2012, she became the Managing Editor of Kansas City Voices arts and literary magazine. You can read samples of her work here.

RUNNER-UP

Fiction: Joseph Saling for "Eva"

Joe Saling's first book of poems, A Matter of Mind, is available from Foothills Publishing. His poetry and stories have appeared widely in such journals as The Raintown Review, The Formalist, The Amherst Review, and The Bacon Review. He lives in Atlanta with his wife Sandy and their dog Yeats. (The New Word Mechanic)

Poetry: Leslie Anne Mcilroy for "Big Bang"

Leslie Anne Mcilroy won the 1997 Slipstream Poetry Chapbook Prize for Gravel, the 2001 Word Press Poetry Prize for her full-length collection Rare Space, and the 1997 Chicago Literary Award. Her book, Liquid Like This, was published by Word Press in 2008 and Slag by Main Street Rag Publishing Company. Leslie's poems appear in Grist, Jubilat, The Mississippi Review, PANK, Pearl, Poetry Magazine, The New Ohio Review, The Chiron Review, and more. She is Managing Editor of HEArt -- Human Equity Through Art. Leslie works as a copywriter in Pittsburgh.

Nonfiction: Debra Burks Hori for "A Clothesline Meditation"

Debra Burks Hori's work has been published or is forthcoming in This I Believe, Crack the Spine, The Penmen Review, Silver Birch Press, and The Los Angeles Times Health Section. When her husband was diagnosed with terminal brain cancer, Debra wrote to comfort herself; she continues her writing to share our universal experience of grief. She is an Educational Therapist in private practice, a parent, and is owned by two cats.