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    Glass/Fire
    Glass/Fire
    Glass/Fire
    Ebook62 pages41 minutes

    Glass/Fire

    By Mandira Pattnaik

    ()

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    About this ebook

    "Deluged with gorgeous language and imagery, Mandira Pattnaik's novella-in-flash Glass/Fire reveals the magic in the malleability of prose and style. Powerful, complex, and emotional, Pattnaik wonderfully threads a narrative about families and friends and loss and love, showing the possibilities of what happens

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherQuerencia Press, LLC
    Release dateNov 22, 2024
    ISBN9798330430246
    Glass/Fire
    Author

    Mandira Pattnaik

    Mandira Pattnaik is an Indian writer, poet and columnist. She is the author of collections "Anatomy of a Storm-Weathered Quaint Townspeople" (2022, Fahmidan Publishing, Poetry), "Girls Who Don't Cry" (2023, Alien Buddha Press, Flash Fiction) and "Where We Set Our Easel" (May 2023, Stanchion Publishing, Novella-in-Flash). Mandira's work has appeared in The McNeese Review, Penn Review, Quarterly West, Passages North, Columbia Journal, The Rumpus, Timber Journal, Contrary, Watershed Review, Quarter After Eight and Best Small Fictions Anthology (2021), among others. Her writing has secured multiple nominations for Pushcart Prize, BotN, Best Small Fictions, Best Microfiction, and listing in Wigleaf Top50 (2023). More at mandirapattnaik.com

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      Book preview

      Glass/Fire - Mandira Pattnaik

      GLASS/FIRE

      Mandira Pattnaik

      A book with moon and clouds Description automatically generated

      Querencia Press – Chicago IL

      QUERENCIA PRESS

      © Copyright 2024

      Mandira Pattnaik

      All Rights Reserved

      No reproduction, copy or transmission of this publication may be made without written permission.

      No paragraph of this publication may be reproduced, copied, or transmitted save with the written permission of the author.

      Any person who commits any unauthorized act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.

      ISBN 978 1 963943 13 9

      .

      www.querenciapress.com

      First Published in 2024

      Querencia Press, LLC

      Chicago IL

      Printed & Bound in the United States of America

      Glass/Fire is dedicated to all the girls of underprivileged background who must make the best of their circumstances in order to survive.

      C O N T E N T S

      Glass/Fire

      Un~broken

      Someone Like Annabelle

      We Stay As You Left Us

      Close as Breath

      Lambda

      Carbon is a Stranded Stone

      Stitches

      Tide

      A Harvest Mismatch

      Rodent Behavior

      Porcellanidae

      On the Sunday Before He leaves, Lily is the Lighthouse

      Jamun

      Introductory Flying Lesson

      Churchyard Kurseong

      A German Reunion

      Unknot

      Half-kissed GirlfriendProsody of Rains

      Cullet

      Do You Know About The Funny Parcel That Got Returned

      Gift

      Asking To Be Married To A Dress

      In a Room — A Chandelier Aglow

      Notes on Previous Publications

      Glass/Fire

      In the mood we were in, fire could be liquid, could be sand, or molten like lava, or flames, licking the last of us. Inching closer, Annabelle, red as henna, as cinnamon, as coals in the oven, the color of syrup, asked if until evening was too long. The two boys at the end of the room, remained huddled like uprooted weeds. Do you know the song, Aye dil hai muskil…? said the girl I no longer remember the name of. I could hear the boys mumbling something in answer, their teeth chattering. We girls, just about sixteen, felt the strange power of something beautiful, the way flames are—vivid, delectable, ochre—but also limitless, something that could singe you, burn you. One of the boys began coughing. The man from Alimuddin’s Indian Kitchen, raw as vengeance, rough as the bark of hound dogs up in Alaska, who had come to our aid, smiled silly. He stretched his hand and pulled the curtain like he perhaps did when he dressed and left for work. The restaurant was closed for something or the other. Annabelle read the notice on the side wall like she would regard the violets by her bedside, with the same teasing flourish she displayed to the boys earlier, as we walked down from school. The same vaunt of beauty that would be dead by the time the marriage-for-citizenship the man would trick her into many weeks later—bearing the strain of an indigo ocean, the fault-lines of impermanent earth—would end.  At this moment in time though, now, the helplessness of the boys, their combustible masses, same as haystack waiting for a flicker, enthralled us. We laughed how the boys, our classmates, cold in their undies, had to hold their pee because they were, for once, caught spying on us. Only much later, in our Physics class, we’d know it takes nearly the same temperature to make glass from sand as the heat of atomic explosion. And still later, how that day had enough ammunition to break one of the boys, shatter him like glass.                                          

      Un~broken

      We’re forever outsiders.

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