Poetic fiction is rare these days. Most short stories or novels get right to the chase; no beating around the bush. Plot, character, plot, setting, plot, and some words to get the job done. Peter Markus breaks the norm with pounds upon pounds of mud and river water. Good, Brother and The Singing Fish, his two short story collections from Calamari Press, use words as destinations; vehicles of sound and not of plot.
Don’t get me wrong, each of Markus’ stories has a new and interesting – sometimes dark – plot. They are stories of two brothers who live on a muddy river and who fish for muddy fish, and sometimes they encounter Girl. And Girl, of course, is made of mud.
The boys get into some strange situations: walking across the river, hammering hands with rusty nails, and dragging obscene amounts of mud into their mother’s kitchen. Reading some of these stories, I tend to think back to summers when I made my mother’s blood boil with dirt and mud and moonlight. Though I was never quite able to walk across a river (believe me, I tried), my inner child smiles wide when I read Markus’ brilliant bits of fiction.
Every story in Good, Brother and The Singing Fish is made of mud, same as girl, same as the river. And just like mud, these books and these stories suck you in and get you good and dirty.
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