Creature

Amina Cain’s Creature brings together short fictions set in the space between action and reflection, edging at times toward the quiet and contemplative, at other times toward the grotesque or unsettling. Like the women in Jane Bowles’s work, Cain’s narrators seem always slightly displaced in the midst of their own experiences, carefully observing the effects of themselves on their surroundings and of their surroundings on themselves. Other literary precursors might include Raymond Carver and John Cage, some unlikely concoction of the two, with Carver’s lucid prose and instinct for the potency of small gestures and Cage’s ability to return the modern world to elementary principles. These stories offer not just a unique voice but a unique narrative space, a distinct and dramatic rendering of being-in-the-world.

A threadless way --
Attached to a self --
I will force this --
The beak of a bird --
The sleeve of my coat --
They've been bringing them here for decades --
Words come to me --
Queen --
Tramps everywhere --
The beating of my heart --
Gentle nights --
There's an excess --
Furniture, table, chair, shelves --
Delicately feeling