BRIDGE OF SIGHS

Prize-winning poet Roeske’s first collection consists of six stories (five published previously) and a novella about relationships and the way conflagrations in the past can scorch the present. The image of the title’s famous Venetian bridge (where prisoners en route to execution could have a last look at the life being left behind) casts a long shadow: In “From This Distance,” a woman marked by a distant but traumatic near-wedding experience boards a cross-country bus to encounter the seatmate from hell, a grotesquely fat man who fleeces her and sends her running; in “A History of Swimming,” a former champion with a sprained back, doing physical therapy in the pool, is splashed by an oblivious fellow swimmer and recalls the fateful day when she watched from the sea while her long-time Caribbean lover had a quickie with a fat man carrying a video camera. In the novella, “The Ecstasy of Magda Brummel,” the bridge has a more ironic role: Magda, seeking a fresh start after years of loneliness and loss, agrees to travel the length of Italy—as friends—with Harry, an older, divorced fellow photography student who has eyes only for her. She sets the pace and the itinerary, Harry gamely going along. But as they move north from Sicily to Rome and finally the lake region above Milan, her dreams of the man she once loved (he disappeared in a hurricane) show signs of subtle alteration—and Harry has his chance.

Roeske’s stories, at first glance, seem filled with emotional cripples, but when all is done, his people don’t seem a whole lot different from the rest of us.