Flower Box

"Summers, more than any other season, are self-contained times of transition," writes Halimah Marcus, Co-Editor of Electric Literature, in her introduction to this issue of Recommended Reading. "In 'The Member of the Wedding,' Carson McCullers explains it this 'And the season of dog days is like it is the time at the end of the summer when as a rule nothing can happen—but if a change does come about, that change remains until the dog days are over. Things that are done are not undone and a mistake once made is not corrected.' If summer is the time of year when progress and stagnation are most at odds, it is no wonder it is a season beloved by storytellers, the chroniclers of hard-earned change.

"In 'Flower Box,' tensions come to a boil when David attends a party thrown by a friend of his ex. For the first time in months, he ventures past the police checkpoints that surround his neighborhood to a 'hermetic, sealed-of' apartment where, 'People nodded in a way that suggested something other than agreement.' Here, the mistakes of David’s past do not escape memory or judgment and the reader begins to lose faith in the promise that fall will bring relief."

About the
A-J Aronstein lives on Chicago's Northwest Side and teaches in the Humanities Division at UChicago His work has recently appeared in The Los Angeles Review of Books, The Paris Review Daily, Tin House's Open Bar, and Post Road Magazine.

About the
Electric Literature is an independent publisher working to ensure that literature remains a vibrant presence in popular culture. Electric Literature’s weekly fiction magazine, Recommended Reading, invites established authors, indie presses, and literary magazines to recommended great fiction. Once a month we feature our own recommendation of original, previously unpublished fiction, accompanied by a Single Sentence Animation. Single Sentence Animations are creative.