Newborn

Fiction. Novella. "Shafts of afternoon light rained through oak and willow and eucalyptus, the boys' small faces stippled with fine golden sunspots as though behind lacework mourning veils knitted from shadow. They stood side-by-side at the edge of a broad yawn of creekbed, eyes bound to what they had discovered there amongst sedge and blackberry and wild rye. Neither spoke. But for birdsong and the muted hum of cars along the nearby avenue it was quiet, the creek gurgling softly in its summer-thinned course. A mizzle of sunbeams shone across the water in fingernail crescents, quick lustrous flashes where an overturned shopping cart formed a mounded swell. The boys remained in fainter light, motionless beside the small still pool of an inlet shaded by the steep bank's tangle of tree roots. Water skimmers skated over the pond's glassy surface, the insects' needle-thin legs dimpling the youngsters' reflections and the reflection of the infant at their feet, its image little more than a wavering smudge. 'Jesus,' one of them whispered..."."What a gift, what a glorious incantation! Each sentence, each segment in NEWBORN is a stone dropped in a pond of still, deep water awash in quiet reverberation. Like Chekhov or the legendary German writer Wolfgang Hilbig, Maes writes with uncommon lyricism and precision as he traverses the rugged emotional terrain."--Gina Ochsner"The kind of imagination evidenced by a story such as his is a reminder of what a magic trick really fine writing can be."--Erica Wagner