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Commentary on “Buckthorn Palace”

John K. Plaski

I wrote novels during college, thanks to many long evenings trapped behind the tutoring desk inside the campus library. Then, during quarantine, I switched to plays, whittling away late nights on the couch as I stayed at home with my parents and their newly-adopted bulldog; short stories finally arrived after rapidly consuming Viet Thanh Nguyen’s The Refugees and Mariana Enriquez’s The Dangers of Smoking in Bed, the latter discovered thanks to an edition of Lapham’s Quarterly I gave my dad as a birthday gift. (Theme: Friendship.)

I always respected short stories from a distance, but discovering Nguyen and Enriquez felt much closer than previous literary relationships, both of them taking my hand and showing me something strange and terrifying and, to my surprise, seemingly doable: “Here’s one way you can start … Look at this detail over here … What do you think about that choice?” When someone you trust shows you the way, moving forward suddenly feels more like a journey than an ordeal.

Journeys consist of origins, destinations, and all the spaces in between, and each of the short stories I’ve published so far exist within the same small town in Western Michigan: rural Rust Belt, a former manufacturing hub for mid-century furniture and appliances. Inspired by a wedding I attended an hour south of Detroit, this setting originally materialized as the backdrop for a comic book series (only roughly outlined), then another novel (only half a chapter written), before this current collection of short stories slowly added up piece by piece.

There’s also a park near my place in Milwaukee that I frequently walked during the spring of 2022: two circular ponds stuffed with reeds, the figure-eight gravel trails above hidden by rolling hills and shaggy pine trees. Hundreds of laps passed before I imagined a group of people who couldn’t stand each another taking the exact same stroll: “Buckthorn Palace” floated to the surface, and after writing four stories back-to-back featuring only one to two (mostly) sympathetic characters, I challenged myself with six I would never willingly join for a hike! (Except for Daphne.)

And a huge thank-you to my friend Kelli for reading this story during the summer of 2023 and showing me what it needed after a year of me staring at my laptop screen and wringing my hands. A great friend will turn any ordeal into a journey.

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John K. Plaski (he/him/his) is a queer, neurodivergent writer based in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Receiving BFAs in Secondary Education and English from Wisconsin Lutheran College, he teaches high school English, Theatre, and Film Studies and shoots film photography in his spare time. His written works have been published in Moonbow Magazine, Euphemism, Riot Ghoul, Louisiana Literature, Teiresian, HAUNTER, Lavendwriter, Marrow Magazine, In the Mood Magazine, the NoSleep Podcast, and samfiftyfour. IG: jkpphoto1196

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