×

SmokeLong Quarterly

Share This f l Translate this page

We Are Pictures of Ourselves Drinking

Story by Grant Bailie (Read author interview) March 25, 2014

art by Alexander C. Kafka

We are pictures of ourselves drinking. We are holding bottles and flashing red from our half-closed eyes. Our mouths are off-center. Lookeehear, we are saying too loud to the rooms we are always in. ThethingIamsaying, we are saying but are frozen in saying it, strangely twisted, like creatures caught between laughter and something sour. Fingers jab in hard flat air. Looklooklook. Here we all are, holding our open bottles and plastic cups for all of eternity or however long it takes to peel and fade. Whichever comes first.

About the Author

Grant Bailie is the author of the novels Cloud 8, Mortarville, New Hope for Small Men, and TomorrowLand, as well as numerous short stories and articles both in print and online.

About the Artist

Alexander C. Kafka is a journalist, photographer, and composer in Bethesda, Maryland. He created the cover image for Lost Addresses: New and Selected Poems by Diann Blakely (Salmon Poetry, 2017). His work has also been published at All Things Fashion DC, BuzzFeed, Fast Company, Juked, Vice, The Washington Post, The Writing Disorder, and many other periodicals. He has been on the documentation team for the Washington Folk Festival at Glen Echo and is a contributing concert photographer for DMNDR. Kafka studied fine-art figure photography with Missy Loewe at the Washington School of Photography and portrait photography with Sora DeVore at Glen Echo Photoworks.

This story appeared in Issue Forty-Three of SmokeLong Quarterly.
SmokeLong Quarterly Issue Forty-Three
ornament

Support SmokeLong Quarterly

Your donation helps writers and artists get paid for their work. If you’re enjoying what you read here, please consider donating to SmokeLong Quarterly today.

Try SmokeLong Fitness

Book Now!

Try SmokeLong Fitness for two months!

Are you curious about the community workshop of SmokeLong Fitness but don’t know if you can commit to a year without a peek behind the curtain? You can try SmokeLong Fitness in January and February 2025 for just $55, and then you can decide whether this community works for you. The base peer-review workshop takes place on our dedicated site all in writing so that you can participate from anywhere, anytime.