On "This Is the Beginning" by Lili Flanders (496 words) ***

A lot of flash is a flight, and this is one of those. It's a fancy. It's a wish. It's a run at the possible, a stab into the realm of the imagination. It's a list of beautiful details, a list indulged upon, details added to details, ideas added to concrete sights (which are themselves only ideas) added to a plot that becomes not so much one of the story but of the mind, which becomes one not so much one of the mind but of the story. Flanders--she of a foreign city's name--talks here of a simple lunch, of the sights around, of the desires those sights beg of her. And then we see the desires trashed--or come to be. Read it however you want here at Vestal Review.