{ AN ISLAND OF FIFTY a novel(la) by Ben Brooks

an excerpt :

Marsha lays paths & tears them up.

The mill is in sight.

Eyes are wretched chunks of light.

I carry in my palms her heart & it throbs with the pulse of a lion. She drinks oxblood on the island. There is a mill on an island. I am weary but my feet pulse with the throb of a chariot: ONWARD.

Marsha talks of beauty with the Hotelier. He is African-American. Watch his gargantuan jaw swell with words. 

They stand beside the marble monolith, beside the mill, beside the chariot, beneath the charioteer.

The charioteer, the hotelier claims, breathes saffron & lives within the trunk of a great oak. He bites into the claws of crabs & washes taste away with woodbines. He pays for cold coffee skinned girls from the ships to gyrate against his spine.

Marsha feigns horror & lifts her skirt. She draws the cross over her breast. The blades of the mill begin to show cracks & the orphans grow restless. People are checking out. There is a small man in the mill who spins thread & bloodies his wrinkled fingers.

One day they will fold, his mother says.

Let them die, he tells her.