“Greenland”
A new short story by faculty member Patrick Somerville appears in Guernica Magazine.
Greenland
I.
Up there, not far from Greenland, north is not quite north. Rob has been reading about it. He’s learned that the Earth’s magnetic pole drifts nine kilometers a year, that it needs to be found every year by the Canadian government because it won’t stay put. Spiderlike, it roams the glacial landscape; it moves because the Earth’s magnetic field is disturbed by particles coming from the sun.
Rob likes how dense this fact seems, even though it implies a sort of leak in the world. He doesn’t want to think about the leak but he likes that we know it’s there.
He is a composer, he prefers closed systems, he prefers managing what’s perfect. He has always been this way.
Rob’s father is dead...[Keep Reading]…
Patrick is the author of the novel This Bright River
