BIG OTHER

“Mrs. Forrester chatted to Niel with her face turned toward him, holding her muff up to break the wind.”
–from A Lost Lady, by Willa Cather

As in a contemporary scene upon a Grecian urn, body language says so much–the way one character inclines toward another with a mixture of pleasure  and discomfort–about the tensions bubbling beneath the drama of even the most ordinary encounters, threatening to burst forth and break desire’s sublime air, if only we are sharp enough to catch the essence of disturbance that the author has hinted at.

D. A. Powell is the author of Chronic.