Pomonok Publishing: Welcome to 'Seventy-Nine!'

Introducing the first short story in a project called Seventy-Nine, a collection of short fiction written by Teresa Jusino and inspired by the work of photographer, Cindy Sherman.

The Project

Jusino has been a fan of photographer Cindy Sherman's work for a long time, and she's especially in love with the images (and youthful ambition) of her Untitled Film Stills, photos Sherman took between 1977 and 1980. Jusino owns a book collecting all the images published by The Museum of Modern Art (where the collection is currently housed), and flips through it periodically. She's always loved how art begets art, and for a while she's wanted to write stories inspired by each of these stills.

The Process

She decided to focus on the images Sherman created in her birth year – 1979 – writing a short story for each. There are 29 total, and while she's seen them all before, and has them each marked with a little Post-It flag in her book, she won't look at any of them again until it's time to write its story. She hopes to give herself the chance to be freshly inspired by the image in the moment.

As a creative boundary (her ADHD brain requires these), Jusino will write each story in the order that the images appear in the book. She wants the challenge of "having" to write a story about this image this month. "Otherwise," she says. "I'm just as likely to flip around the collection looking for the one that 'inspires me most' only to not make a decision and put off writing anything."

The Purpose

This is partly an experiment, just to see what creativity the images inspire, but it's also an excuse for Jusino to get back to writing prose fiction, something she's been missing as she's focused on screenwriting the past several years.

Eventually, there will be 29 short stories in as many months. As each story is released, it'll be sent to paid subscribers to our monthly newsletters at the Pomonok Publishing and Pomonok PREMIUM tiers. Other members, and the public, will have access to an excerpt (like the one below!) to whet their appetites.

Eventually, we hope to collect them all into a nice digital/hard copy edition of some sort. But first, the stories themselves.

AUTHOR'S NOTE:

When I started this story, inspired by 'Untitled Film Still #32', I knew that it would explore my love of liminal spaces. I genuinely have a love of places like airports and hotels – places where time works differently and it feels like anything can happen – and the woman in this image seems to be standing in such a space. In both nothing and everything.

My writing this in second person is another choice I made going into this. It clearly reflects the fact that I'm currently taking an interactive fiction writing class and exploring the wonderful world of video game writing. But after having read this voice used expertly in the N.K. Jemisin novel 'The Fifth Season,' I marveled at how potent it is, and I wanted to play with it in prose fiction myself.

I wasn't, however, expecting to explore some of the other things I explore in this piece. As I wrote, my character went from airport, to hotel, to funeral home. Suddenly, this became a very different story than the one I set out to tell. What started as an experiment became deeply personal. Clearly, this was the story I needed to write.

-- Teresa

Seventy-Nine #1: "32 Inches of Liminal Space"

You love hotels and airports. Liminal spaces where nothing counts, and the world can't demand anything of you.

You love strolling through the airport while waiting for a flight, grabbing a way-too-expensive coffee as you peruse bookstores, contemplate getting a chair massage, and watch traveling families interact with each other. You don't understand the people sitting in the waiting areas at their gates looking miserable and exhausted. Aren't they as energized by the possibility of airports as you are?

Some of the most interesting conversations you've ever had have been in airports. You still remember the Three Genes fondly – three older men named Gene who didn't know each other, but who all happened to be going to the same farming convention in Brazil. They told you more than you ever thought you'd learn about tractors. Gene #1 told you way too much about his daughter's divorce.

But you absorbed everything, because things are different in airports. Time is different. People are different.

You feel the same way about hotels. You love imagining the lives happening behind every door, and the hotel staff (a cast of characters all their own) gleaning entertainment from the random, often embarrassing belongings they find during cleanings and check-outs. You love the feeling of starfishing on a hotel bed as time slows. And there's something weirdly soothing about the hotel channel on their TVs when you first turn them on. Yes, please list the amenities of this fine establishment. Yes, wax rhapsodic about the many things this city has to offer.

When you're alone in a hotel room, you're free. Free of expectation. Free of responsibility.

In a space like this, you're more willing to try things you never have before. You're more willing to go to a bar alone, take a long walk just to try and get lost, kiss a total stranger just because you can, and why not? No one knows you here. No one gets to tell you you're not yourself.

You think about all this as you sit in the director's office at the funeral home as he speaks to you and your family about how you plan to bury your mother. Looking around, you realize that funeral homes are liminal spaces, too.

This might be the first time you're partly responsible for the logistics of someone's burial, but it's not the first time you've been in a place like this. An occupational hazard of being the child of much older parents is that everyone in your family is old. By twenty-six, you've already been to countless wakes, memorials, and burials. You're a pro at this.

You're so much of a pro that when your father and older siblings seem out of it when discussing arrangements, you manage to negotiate a deal on your mother's casket. You're at your best in spaces like this, where time slows, giving your creative mind the chance to be exactly what it needs to be in the moment.

Afterwards, you go to your parents' house – now just your father's house – because your mother needs a burial outfit, and you and your sister have volunteered to pick something out. As your sister goes through your mother's drawers, distracted by the memories attached to every shirt or pair of pants, you open the closet. You know which dresses were your mother's favorite, and you're sure one of them would serve her well as The Last Thing She'll Ever Wear.

You step into the closet and are overcome by familiar smells. Your mother's signature perfume still lingering on some of her clothes, combined with the musty, vaguely sour-milk smell of hospital still attached to the cardigans she wore most recently during her countless trips from the house, to hospital, to nursing home, and back again.

You step into the hanging clothes, wrapping your arms around as many as you can and bury your face in them. Eyes closed, you absorb the last remnants of your mother by breathing deeply, letting all her smells – good and bad – enter you. If your sister can indulge in sense memory, so can you.

You release your body weight into the clothes, hanging there along with her dresses and blouses and cardigans. You sink deeper and deeper into them, and even as you're absorbing your mother's essence from them, the clothes seem to be absorbing you back...

** We hope you enjoyed this excerpt **

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