Reatta, by Alec Ivan

Prose, chapbook, 20 pages, from Bottlecap Features.

Few landscapes exist in this world quite like that of a summer’s Indiana. The rolling flatscapes of cropfields melding with thickets of flowing woods dropped inconspicuous throughout the land; a tender touch of the sunlight as it takes the yearning of the humidity and plants it firmly on your skin; the manure and pollen dust undulating within the heatwaves at the corner of your periphery, hanging low on the horizon like some shroud of fuzzy wavering beckoning you to explore the consequence of discovery. It’s almost like a wonder of the world. Almost like a dream.

The life of an Indiana summer is felt warmly in Reatta, a casual tale of cruising, friendship, and the connection between all of us, whether seen or unseen, in this dream of all dreams. It is the emotion of a drive across these fields, a telling of what is special about the most unassuming earth and where it’s placed in the little lives living in it. Reatta is less a story and more of an exploration: like a lengthy Sunday drive, it flows from thought to thought, life to life, just as the sunrise and sunset, just as the to-and-fro of the cornstalks swaying in a hot wind. The text is not meant to tell you anything, because you’ve already been told. Its purpose is to introduce a feeling within you, something impossible to replicate. Something that can only be found in the middle of a dirt road, in the passenger seat of a classic car, in the middle of absolutely nowhere.

Alec Ivan is a midwestern writer responsible for the publication of PHOTOGRAPHS OF MADNESS (Back Patio Press, 2019) and THE TENDER ATROCITIES (Sweat-Drenched Press, 2020.) His work has been featured online in publications such as Expat Press, don’t submit!, Keep Planning, Soft Cartel, and Always Crashing, among others. He lives in Indiana with his wife and two cats. Each of them looks good in the sun.