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No Straight Lines
The Hyacinth Review
The Hyacinth Review

No Straight Lines

by
October 13, 2022
Painting of a small English village, the figure of a Catholic priest can be seen walking down a tree lined road
The Priest, Frits Thaulow, 19th c.

Jared Povanda is a writer, poet, and freelance editor from…

The priest moonlights as a magician because reconciling religion with desire and sawing someone in half both require faith and steady hands. He steers a stained glass window as if the window were a ship with three masts and the sky beyond it octopus ink, and he guesses that also makes him a sailor charting the Blessed Mother’s blue silhouette. He can be a cartographer for somewhere better, though there are no straight lines to anywhere anymore. Everything zigzags like black flies in God’s Mouth. And every time the tide recedes it flees from the summer he kissed Michael and tasted limes. An old map unfolds under the priest’s hands. The softened creases caressing salty currents along once-familiar lips— The passive voice bewitching slicked skin out of scripture.
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Jared Povanda is a writer, poet, and freelance editor from upstate New York. He has been nominated for Best of the Net and Best Microfiction, and his work has been published or is forthcoming in numerous literary journals including Wigleaf, The Citron Review, Hobart, Milk Candy Review, and Uncharted Magazine. You can find him online @JaredPovanda, jaredpovandawriting.wordpress.com, and in the Poets & Writers Directory

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