Pinion

Author: Lake, Jay
In this eloquent long poem, Claudia Emerson employs the voices of two family members on a small southern farm to examine the universal complexities of place, generation, memory, and identity. Alternating between the voices of Preacher and Sister, Pinion is narrated by the younger, surviving sister, Rose, in whose memory the now-gone family and farm vividly live on: “In the dream that recurs, like a bird returning, the place is still as it was—as though they went away, years ago, fully intending to be back by first dark.” Sister tells of her observances in day-to-day life in the 1920s and her struggle to take care of her father, grown brothers, and Rose—“the change-of-life baby”—after the death of her mother: “The hens had hidden their heads beneath / their wings; they blinded themselves as I dusted / the kneading bowl with flour sifted fine as silk, and so / I disappeared as I sank my fists into it.” Preacher feels keenly the burden of running the farm and fears being the last one to live on the place: “I was held fast there, pinioned, not / dying, growing numb and light, wait-crazed / and finally calm.” Both wrestle with a desire for independence and the duty to home they are bound to by birth; neither marries or leaves. Pinion is ultimately a wrenching elegy that Rose creates. She is the one who escaped, only to realize “I survive them all, but I find I have become the house they keep.”

Books in Clockwork Earth Series (2)

Other books by Lake, Jay

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The Escapement

The astonishing conclusion to the Engineer Trilogy, an exquisitely crafted tale of revenge from a unique and remarkable new voice in fantasy fiction. The engineer Ziani Vaatzes engineered a war... Read more

Mainspring

In a world in which the planets are run by a sophisticated clockwork solar system that connects everyday people to the Creator, a young clockmaker's apprentice is appointed by the... Read more

Pinion

In this eloquent long poem, Claudia Emerson employs the voices of two family members on a small southern farm to examine the universal complexities of place, generation, memory, and identity.... Read more

Mainspring

A universe of gears, literally. Mainspring really explores the idea of a gear-based universe to the extreme with the universe a giant clockwork being wound up by a mainspring, first... Read more

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