Jim Meirose proves that innovative literature is alive and well, and with Sunday Dinner With Father Dwyer he plumbs further into the depths of the art form’s infinite potential.
“This moment the sky could be blue, the sun hot and bright, the ocean smooth as glass, and then that moment, wham: darkness fell from some backstage area beyond the sun—multiple times each and every day—that somehow the sunlight yanked up short at the end of some rope formed of lightning and thunder. Its abrupt stop caused the sheets of ice-cold rain riding atop it to break violently free and plummet down on the ship, smashing hammer-like down on the decks.”
With such abruptness, Meirose’s words turn us from mirth to fear, to fascination, to shame, until we catch ourselves laughing and wondering how so many emotions can be evoked and intermingled.
“I think I might want you, she said, and in your horror you turned, following some large black hard ball full of fingerholes, through the jagged glass shards and splinters, and ouch, oh, God no, your thumb was off!”
Father Dwyer, host of a cooking show for containership crews, accompanies us on a physical journey from here to there that turns into a metaphysical journey as well.
“All the hidden wires are twisted and crossed now, and the dream-space and the wake-space and the future-state and the past-state and the relentlessly drifting forward now-state are leaking into and out of the other.”
