Memorializing Grandma in Pixels
Dust
Gypsy's First Caravan
A Bordello for Verse
If I Ever Forget Thee, O Babylon
Beyond the Classroom and Any Arbitrary Grade
Drama, Comedy, and Heart Uncaged
Got Venison?
By M. Alouette - You might visit Washington, D.C. for a glimpse of the White House, the monuments, bona fide politicos, or...white-tailed deer? Perhaps not for long. Bambis are so prevalent in Rock Creek Park* that the National Park Service has estimated that about 70 deer inhabit every square mile of the park, about four times what experts say the ecosystem can healthily support. The New York Times dubbed it “a surplus Washington could do without.” In 2012, Rock Creek came up with a plan to manage the deer population—or as the plan states it, reduce “the park's deer population through lethal and non-lethal means” over the course of the next 15 years. More...
Mansplain
By Sarah Sawyers-Lovett - I was a dude in distress. Stuck on the side of the interstate while cars whizzed past me, I whipped out my phone to find it dead. Again. I got out of the car and sat on the hood, trying to look hapless and unthreatening enough for someone to stop. It wasn’t just that some jagoff had sideswiped me into the medium; it was that the impact had flattened both of the driver’s side tires and I only had one spare. And if I’m being honest here, I didn’t even know how to change a spare tire. Being the dashing son of media royalty meant nothing if you had to get your hands dirty, amirite? I was thinking about hoofing it to the next ramp, when the whoop of a siren startled me. When she got out of the car it was like that scene from Wayne’s World where everything goes all slow-motion and “Dream Weaver” starts playing in the background. She was a bit taller than me, and her police uniform hugged her curves in ways that made me consider a life of crime. “Need some help?” she said, More...
Return of the Moon Princess
By Fay Funk - In mid-May Hulu announced that it has acquired the rights to broadcast the classic animeSailor Moon. There’s more good news for Sailor Moon fans: The show is getting a reboot in July 2014 called Sailor Moon Crystal, and some still artwork has already been released.
Even though I haven’t seen Sailor Moon in years, this news made my heart flutter, and it goes deeper than just nostalgic excitement. Sailor Moon showed me early on that women can do anything. It introduced me to feminism before I knew what feminism was. Sailor Moon didn’t More... Post-Race All America
By Sam Carrigan - "This is retarded." I didn't know this drunken stranger in the blazer and whale-checkered shorts, but because we were both in the intractable line for the portable toilets, we had some common cause together, which was enough for him to share this unique insight with me. I don't like "retard" or its variants being used in the pejorative—more than anything, it reminds me of the way people spoke and thought in middle school—but didn't think that my sunburned companion in necessity was worth engaging on this point. If things got heated and came to blows, it would seriously risk my place in the port-o-potty line. A horse race, it seems, is no place for political correctness. The spring's Foxfield Races, Albemarle County, Virginia's annual horse race that attracts thousands of young college students, mostly from the University of Virginia and its alumni such as myself, is first and foremost a tailgating event. The joke More...
Spring
By Charles Bane, Jr. - March 23, 2012 Dear Don, I live in Palm Beach, Florida, which surprises visitors: it is more Carribbean than American in mood and very small, only five miles long and never wider than half a mile. It’s a few minutes walk from the Intracoastal Waterway on its west edge, to the Atlantic. My health was restored in moving here many years ago, but nothing would give me greater pleasure than to meet you and revisit New England or welcome you as my guest. More...
Emmaline and Alander
By Brooke Bartleson - I. When Alander was happy, he liked to skate, feeling the wind in his hair as he rolled down the sidewalk. But ever since his wife left, his skates collected dust on the shelf above the bed. After a year of loneliness, Alander drank a microwaved cup of coffee, placed the empty mug on the counter, took up his handgun, and shot himself in the head. He immediately woke as a child on his parents’ bed. He had been asleep for fifty minutes. The sun was shining. II. In an apartment by a river that arched and city lights that sighed, Emmaline was crying on the floor of her shower in her black and blue dress. She was ripping apart from the inside. She was lonely… she’d taken up her sewing scissors and made a party of paper people. She poured More...
Wilted
By Anne McCrery -
I wonder if you were beautiful long ago in the darkness of summer’s sun-faded night, starlight sticking in your eyelashes. Silk skin in the grass. A cream and sugar dress printed with wild strawberries. More... Winter
By Charles Bane, Jr. - In the winter of 2012, Donald Hall, then eighty three years old, could sit back at his rural home, Eagle Pond Farm, in New Hampshire and accurately reflect that he was the most significant contemporary poet in the United States. He had recently been awarded the National Medal of the Arts by President Barack Obama. He was past Poet Laureate of the United States; a winner, in 1988, of the National Book Critics Circle Award for More...
The Impression
By C. Janelle Tuma - My children, when I was born, the world was not as it is today. It was darker, and despair was as common and plentiful as the hairs on your little heads. It was as if the sun didn't shine for nearly a hundred years, and the hearts of men had fallen into shadow. But you well know that all was not lost. At the age of five, I possessed faith without bounds, and the mistrust of the great wide world had yet to take hold of me. Because of this, it was so More...
Mist Between The Pines
By Bremer Acostia - I once lived in a town called Fogfield. You’d know the place if you ever ran out of gas while driving somewhere more desirable. You see, Fogfield isn’t really much of a town, as far as towns go. Some towns are big, other towns are small. In the grand scheme of town sizes, this one is somewhere in the middle, wedged in between a mountain and a forest of pines. Here’s a little trivia about Fogfield. Read in between the lines of the brochure: The townspeople here wear polka-dotted dresses More...
Wild, Weird, and Wonderfully Queer
By Kristen Rebelo - Wild, Weird, and Wonderfully Queer is a children's 'zine that focuses on examples of gender nonconformity, unconventional family structures, and gay relationships in the animal world. It is wholly inspired by a recent conversation with a professor (and father) who did not believe such relationships are present in nature. Another inspiration? Reading Judith Halberstam's The Queer Art of Failure and realizing that March of The Penguins lied. Though much homophobic discussion is centered More...
Fishy Narrators in this Samurai Tale
By Alex Carrigan - Perspective is a funny thing. The way a person views the world can be shaped by numerous factors in their* life, from something grand like their childhood to something simple like their emotional state in a given moment. At the same time, perspective is something that can be heavily colored by hindsight. A person may wish they were the victim in an event or imagine a person as being worse than they actually were. Perspective can color scenes in a certain way, and in some cases, completely obscure the truth. More...
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The Quail Bell Crew• Christine Stoddard - Editor
• Kristen Rebelo - Art Director • Jessica Reidy - Outreach Editor • Deniz Ataman - Poetry Editor • Mo Karnage - Contributing Editor • Claire LeDoyen - Editorial Assistant • Sarah Sullivan - Editorial Assistant • Ghia Vitale - Editorial Intern • Laura Bramble - Assistant Art Director • Katelyn Rebelo - Film & Video Assistant • Alex Carrigan - Staff Film Reviewe • Fay Funk - Staff Writer • Zack Budryk - Staff Writer • Raquel Lynne - Staff Writer • Laura Steadham Smith - Staff Writer • Luna Lark - Staff Writer • Sorcha Patricks - Staff Writer • Christine Skelly - Staff Illustrator • Sarah V. Smith - Staff Set Designer 
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