{"id":659,"date":"2022-04-15T21:03:53","date_gmt":"2022-04-15T21:03:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/wordpress.lvc.edu\/wordpress\/greenblotter\/?p=659"},"modified":"2022-04-15T21:03:53","modified_gmt":"2022-04-15T21:03:53","slug":"the-angry-seeds-review-of-zoe-raines-when-my-girlfriends-head-becomes-an-orange-in-the-middle-of-the-night-invisible-city-march-16-2022","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wordpress.lvc.edu\/greenblotter\/2022\/04\/15\/the-angry-seeds-review-of-zoe-raines-when-my-girlfriends-head-becomes-an-orange-in-the-middle-of-the-night-invisible-city-march-16-2022\/","title":{"rendered":"\u201cthe angry seeds\u201d: Review of Zoe Raine\u2019s \u201cWhen My Girlfriend\u2019s Head Becomes an Orange in the Middle of the Night\u201d (Invisible City, March 16, 2022)"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

reviewed by Isaac Fox<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Zoe Raine centers her flash story \u201cWhen My Girlfriend\u2019s Head Becomes an Orange in the Middle of the Night\u201d around a relationship that is messy at best and abusive at worst. She paints this all-too common dynamic in vibrant, wild images and a reasonless, free-flowing dream logic.<\/span><\/p>\n

Upon seeing that their girlfriend\u2019s head has a peel and seeds, the narrator doesn\u2019t ask how or why. Instead, they ask themself, \u201cI wonder who it\u2019s for? I\u2019ve always hated oranges.\u201d Their mind skims over a wild supernatural phenomenon to focus on being suspicious of their partner, an absurd mental move that feels psychologically real. The story\u2019s dream logic, then, is the dream logic of many romantic relationships.<\/span><\/p>\n

The narrator \u201cdig[s their] chewed nails into the skin\u2014her skin<\/em>?\u201d, takes an orange slice, and eats. Other than that one tiny moment of questioning (\u201cher skin<\/em>?\u201d), the narrator shows no real concern for their girlfriend. This act\u2019s carnal, visceral messiness feels sexual, but not in a way that compliments any healthy relationship. One partner quite literally nourishes themself by diminishing the other.<\/span><\/p>\n

Raine never clarifies how sentient and aware the girlfriend is throughout this process, whether she can change back, or to what extent the orange is still a head. (It apparently has \u201cveins.\u201d) These unanswered questions make the story\u2019s stakes eerily vague. Remember that Raine filters this story through a first-person point of view: readers can\u2019t make out exactly what\u2019s happened to the narrator\u2019s girlfriend because the narrator doesn\u2019t care.<\/span><\/p>\n

For them, the act of peeling an orange also has old family associations. They remember watching their aunt eat oranges, \u201cseem[ing] as if she was peeling away her own bitterness with every thoughtful puncture.\u201d Although they never enjoyed oranges, they peeled and ate them alongside their aunt. They saw something that appeared important and didn\u2019t fully understand it, and as kids will, they imitated.<\/span><\/p>\n

For them, peeling and eating the orange that is\/was their girlfriend\u2019s head means more than its odd face value. Certainly, it\u2019s cyclical. Maybe, it\u2019s an attempt at renewal, or perhaps rebellion within the relationship. Or maybe they\u2019re doing exactly what their child self did: imitating a thing they don\u2019t understand, and simply, selfishly, absorbing its sensations.<\/span><\/p>\n

Invisible City<\/em> is a literary magazine from the University of San Francisco’s MFA program. Its spring issue came out on March 16. <\/span><\/p>\n\n\n

Isaac Fox is a student at Lebanon Valley College, where he majors in English and creative writing. He spends his free time reading and writing things that aren\u2019t assigned, shooting pictures, and playing the clarinet. His fiction and photography have appeared in Rune Bear<\/em> and Heart of Flesh<\/em> magazines, as well as Green<\/em> Blotter<\/em>\u2019s 2021 issue. You can find him on Twitter at @IsaacFo80415188.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

reviewed by Isaac Fox Zoe Raine centers her flash story \u201cWhen My Girlfriend\u2019s Head Becomes an Orange in the Middle of the Night\u201d around a relationship that is messy at […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[3,5],"class_list":["post-659","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-isaac-fox","tag-micro-review","clearfix"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.lvc.edu\/greenblotter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/659","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.lvc.edu\/greenblotter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.lvc.edu\/greenblotter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.lvc.edu\/greenblotter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.lvc.edu\/greenblotter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=659"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.lvc.edu\/greenblotter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/659\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.lvc.edu\/greenblotter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=659"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.lvc.edu\/greenblotter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=659"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.lvc.edu\/greenblotter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=659"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}