The Pleasures of Selah – A Novel of Faith, Sex, and Mystery
“It was green along the banks of the Selah, but the body was white. A few feet from shore, it floated face down in the shallows over smooth grey slabs of rock left by the last ice age. The water was quiet there, a small eddy off to the side of the main flow. An arm had snagged on an alder branch and pulled the torso into a small swirl of debris — leaves, styrofoam cup, river froth, naked body, stretch of yellow cord, white gallon jug—things that do and do not decay.” From THE PLEASURES OF SELAH — A Work-In-Progress.
The Memory Readers – A Novel of Loss and Desire
“He wanted a cigarette. He only smoked a few every year, almost always when he was out of town, but he wanted one now. From the first morning she joined him, he could smell the smoke coming off her clothes and it kicked up his longing. It was a habit he’d given up when he realized he was getting sick more often and staying sick longer. That was years ago. The yearning wasn’t always with him, but it came now and then. Maybe when he turned eighty, he’d begin again, if he made it that long.” From The Memory Readers — A Work-In-Progress.
“Three Ducks”
It was not that bright or happy time when the day or season is new. The best of both had passed. Apples were still ripening, but most of the garden had faded, the lawns were straw, long surrendered by their caretakers.
“The Archbishop Is Dying”
Sun-blasted madrona, blue-blasted sky, jangled days
startled on occasion by love.
Romeo so patiently trying to find words for Juliet
cold-sheeted in the emergency room.
He places her cool hand against his hot cheek,
tries to breathe words beneath her skin.
While down the hall Olivia begs Viola not to go.
She knows who Cesario is
and loves her even more.
She slips her hand into the other’s body,
through that spot just to the right of the heart,
not to harm but to be that close,
hand passed full through,
now embracing, pulling two bodies into one if only for so long
as it takes to play the balcony scene.
The archbishop is dying before our eyes.
The altar holds him up,
his voice fades in the final prayers
soft, soft, soft as the wafer
quiet as the wine kissing the edge of the cup
soft as the sound of oil on eyelids.
Trigorin on the hospital steps smoking,
waiting for a cab to take him to the airport hotel.
He has a morning flight to Denver or Louisville.
He hears Nina’s soft tears and gentle laughter through paper walls
covered with images of Ophelia, newspaper headlines, fragments of Komachi’s poems.
The stars spin round the Madrona tree now blasted by moonlight,
chimes from the porch of a house tell the wind.
Wakened now at 4:32 a.m.,
gashed conversations
still rumble in the still of morninged night.
Geoff Proehl, Writer, Pacific Northwest 