Sleigh Ride by Joe Fletcher

Prose by Joe Fletcher
Gouache collages by Mikołaj Moskal

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There was a sleigh: jet black and gleaming.

The long steel runners curved at their termini like arabesques of ice. It was too dark to clearly discern the design on its side, but it was intricate, ornate, suggestive of cuneiform and the minarets of Cairo. Two orange lanterns mounted above the driver’s chair were each encircled by a cloud of gnats and moths. Draped in fabulously embroidered saddlecloths, Ajax and Hector stomped the earth.

In Sleigh Ride, a kinetically wondrous prose tale from poet Joe Fletcher, a father and his convalescing son plunge in carpentered, stallion-drawn sleigh slashing through lush forest, advancing through a sequence of diorama-like settings. The books ten chapters are interspersed with gouache collages by Kraków artist Mikołaj Moskal (REMMUS), rooted and riverine, functioning as curtains swept aside to reveal each chapter of Fletcher’s exhilarating nocturne.

Given that the only exit from the cellar was the door, hardly wider and taller than a man, I marveled at how father could have extracted his creation from his smithy and pointed it at the forest. But I said nothing as I climbed unaided onto the purple velvet couch.

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2025
Edition of 500
68 pages, paperback, 12×17 cm, color offset, sewn & glued
Printed on Arctic Munken Print Cream 115 and Pure Rough 300
Designed by Damian Nowak
ISBN 978-83-68165-13-5

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Joe Fletcher is the author of The Hatch (Brooklyn Arts Press), a poetry collection; chapbooks including Partial Veil (Romance Press), The Parachutist (Ethel), and Kola Superdeep Borehole (Bateau Press); and a scholarly monograph, William Blake as Natural Philosopher, 1788–1795 (Anthem Press). He teaches at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and serves as Assistant Editor of the William Blake Archive.