Electric Literature's Single Sentence Animation Series

From Electric Literature (the literary magazine for which I read)! This is the first installment in the Electric Literature Single Sentence Animation series. SSAs are a creative collaboration between writers published in Electric Literature and contemporary visual artists. The writer selects a single sentence from their work and the animator shapes a short film in response.

Here we'll see the animation of a single sentence from Lydia Millet’s “Sir Henry.” The sentence: “Sometimes he wished he could gather all the dogs he loved most and walk off the end of the world with them.”

Luca Dipierro’s film is superb and haunting.

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Electric Literature's Single Sentence Animation Series

Dressed in Your Dreams by Pia Wilson

When we were alone together, Dinesh would let me paint halos around his eyes with kohl shadow and coat his nails with black polish. I would then line my own full lips with crimson pencil, fill them in with a matching lipstick, and mark his olive skin with my kisses.

If I got him drunk enough, he would consent to a few Polaroid pictures taken of him in this state. If he was not drunk enough, I’d make love to him and wait until he was sleeping to take my photos. I stashed them in a box, underneath my grandmother’s diaries.

I waited until Dinesh and I were in the seventh month of our relationship to introduce the skirt. It was a black, beaded wraparound made in Taiwan. I had gotten it in a Chinatown boutique, discounted at twenty percent. I thought it had the look of an eel’s skin as it swims in moonlight.

Please read the rest of the story at summersetreview.org!

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Dressed in Your Dreams by Pia Wilson

Unsalted Swain by Pia Wilson

There was gas coming out of the pilot. Ricky could smell it. He twisted the knob on the stove. Click, click. No light, and Ricky wanted his bacon. There were long matches in the dining room, but he didn't want to hobble back there. His ankle was stiff from the coming rain. He'd warned his wife to leave the matches by the stove. Ricky banged the heavy pan against the burner. That's how people think he got burned.

It wasn't. He'd had his thick bacon and sludge coffee. He'd gone out and pulled down an old tree for winter wood. He'd had a good lunch: a juicy hunk of meatloaf and mashed potatoes. His favorite. May, the woman he should have married, fixed it special. Then, he'd slept with her on her perfumed sheets. She was a lady. He hadn't thought highly of that when they were young. He did now. When Ricky came home, he'd had such a good day that when he grumbled about that the misplaced matches, he didn't even raise his hand for a slap. His wife had been making a venison stew. That's where Ricky got the burns on his hands that tattered his forearm. She'd thrown the boiling gruel, saying she'd take anything but a cheating man. Ricky had known that, and so he didn't choke her when he could use his hands again. He put honey on his skin to heal the burns, like the Indian shaman had showed him. It worked pretty good. Still, May cried when she looked over them, and Ricky couldn't see her any more, not if she was going to salt his life with tears. He liked things simple.

When people asked him about the burns, Ricky would say, "There was gas coming out of the pilot ..."

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Unsalted Swain by Pia Wilson