In all my time in airports and railway terminals, the sentimental junctions of the world, I have seen only one parting that moved me. It was a July afternoon in Northern Italy, at a small train station ornate as a wedding cake. Two gay men stood in a pocket of stillness, formed where the crowd's current divided and eddied around them. Young fingers parted grey hair, muscled body holding the lank body firm in an embrace that wandered as if to take in every limb and hollow of the other. They kissed occasionally, exchanged a phrase or two, but it was that embrace that drew the eye and arrested the heart. If it was scandalous, it was the scandal of defiant tenderness, contra naturam that the young should love the old this freely and without compromise. It was like the clean strokes of the swimmer, that caress--reaching forward for the portion of water he must enter and occupy next, pulling it towards him, cupping its substantiality, even as he must move through it and beyond. The loved body is always, moment by moment, being left behind, like water one parts and penetrates. So we dance most gracefully through the fluids of love and time.

- Melita Schaum

Spring Issue, 1998

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The Literary Review: An International Journal of Contemporary Writing has been published quarterly by Fairleigh Dickinson University since 1957. Its many special issues have introduced new fiction, poetry, and essays from many nations, regions, or languages to English readers. Issues focus on such topics as contemporary Portugese literature, Iranian exiles, the Jewish diaspora, North African authors, and Russian women writers. Works from issues devoted to writing in English have won awards and been reprinted in many collections.

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