The Smoke from Hidden Fires
David Newkirk Churn: An Illustrated Novel-in-Stories, by Chloe Chun Seim, Texas Review Press, 2024.
What is it like to be a fire-breathing dragon? Classical mythology does not provide any answers. Sure, we get a lot about the dragon slayers. But don’t bother looking for dragon-centric stories. We never see the world through the eyes that live behind the fiery plumes. We can speculate about the dragon’s point of view. We can wonder about the cost of surviving, just surviving however you can, in a world where “home” is an alien place and dragons are not welcome. We can make guesses about the struggle needed to see the next sunrise. However, their interiority is behind an opaqueness, trapped in a Schrodinger’s box whose insides humans can never observe. Unless, of course, something transformative happens. In Chloe Chun Seim’s Churn: An Illustrated Novel-in-Stories, two adolescents flee the latest and most violent episode of mutual domestic violence between their soon-to-be separated parents. Chun, the brother, seeks refuge in a lake. Something pulls him down, down into a deepness that is deeper than life, a place where the weight of the lake splits the complexity of the world into simple colors: Green are the weeds that wrap his ankles. Purple, the color of fear. Orange is the hand that grabs him, but not before he hears