Encounters with the Empress
By Brian Michael Barbeito
QuailBellMagazine.com
The help will go without miles counting.
- Mother Meera, in ‘Answers’
It happened in that time of significant trouble. The outward dilemmas had finally ceased. These included but were by no means limited to the two women that had appeared, and through a particular sort of magnetism, caused certain misfortunes to Jacob and themselves. They had been like sirens or like some kind of bright purple or orange fighter fish adorned with painted bodies. It took a long time to put them in abeyance, along with other more amicable contacts that had turned conspiratorial. And what was more; there was no twelve step program for matters of the soul, or even for more nuanced problems of the secular type. But it had been done, and to give up the past proved akin to letting go of a chemical dependence or at the least something sorely required.
The problem was that there was an inner life also. Its ache and voice would not be dulled or stilled. Universal processes and all of that. Jacob just went along, having faith in things unseen, which as they say, is a definition of faith in itself. Soon days and weeks turned to months and even years. He was in some kind of transition period, difficult to be sure, but necessary. It resembled the abyss, of which he was familiar, but was not an abyss as such. Turquoise can be mistaken for shattuckite, as both have various blue hues and are beautiful, but both hold different characteristics and properties, come from different mines, and most importantly of all, assist in different purposes. The uninitiated might scoff, and say a stone is just a stone, and both are stones, not flowers of Southern France, Chinese lanterns, industrial machinery, crochet needles, or metropolises, and those times of dark are just that,- times of dark and nothing more or less. But though both prove difficult to maneuver within, and appear similar, the abyss and the time of transition are not the same animal.
In the middle of it all an archetypal and esoteric figure made an appearance. She came to see Jacob and Kara in a part of the night that was deepest and most silent. A part of the night before and yet beyond- in depth- the proverbial witching hours. A labyrinthine part that inhabited a secret envelope contained in an under layer of an under layer. There are things there, and they are difficult to remember. Jacob had lived there at times, and Kara was a visitor to such places, and often came back from those places to speak about future events in the lives of those she knew.
The figure appeared with a door behind her, and holding an object in her left hand, though the exact identification of the object was not known about right away. Kara, normally a woman of strong spiritual stature, was starting to go into shock, and soon was paralysed with fear. The figure was tall and looking out from black eyes that stood under white hair. She wore a long green dress that had small symbols emblazoned on it. Jacob walked over to her and hugged her. At his point, as stunned to her core as Kara was, she went into an even deeper shock.
Trembling.
Awe.
Angst.
Trembling.
Laboured breath.
Mind off.
Something else on.
Trembling.
Trembling.
Trembling.
The woman was staring at and straight through Kara. The figure looked and looked some more and then with unwavering intent, in a raised voice, spoke one word. It was the only word that was spoken at all during the visit.
“Kneel!”
And so Kara knelt. With a sure-fire immediacy the figure raised what she was holding in the hand. She then struck Kara with the cylindrical object.
Shock.
Crashing.
Body.
Second body into first.
Shock.
In a moment, they were out of that instance. Kara explained to Jacob that the woman was simply too powerful. Sitting up in the bed and staring into space she said, “I was overwhelmed...”
“She came to tell you to take it easy on me,” replied Jacob.
“Why does it always have to be about you?”
“It doesn’t,” said Jacob, “Maybe she just came to kick your ass.”
In the light, by the new hours of days, Jacob contemplated the Empress. He thought about other things, such as Mother Meera, a divine incarnation of the feminine that worked mostly in silence. He had written to Mother Meera once upon a time. Her words, if there were any sent back from Germany, did not reach his hands those years and years ago. But she had spoken to answer questions at some point and Jacob remembered reading the words of the divine mother. She had said that ‘The help will go without miles counting’.
Maybe, Jacob thought, for now, somehow, with the aid of the divine feminine figures, he had managed to end up on the right sight of the difficult transitory hours.
The Tooth Fairy Apprentice
By Michelle Nott
QuailBellMagazine.com
Choices
Tooth Fairy fluttered in with such grace, no one could say she was a day over 150. Her dress was made of the finest rose petals. And her wand - with every good deed, it shone brighter and brighter. If only we could be as well-traveled, well-read, and refined as she...
Tooth fairies are the only ones anyone talks about these days. I thought about being a sea fairy, but there is such a rivalry with mermaids. I thought about being a desert fairy, but I have very dry wings and all that heat wouldn't help. I also thought of being a spring fairy, but I have allergies. A fairy allergic to pollen - what luck!
Dentitia approached me one day to talk about what kind of fairy I was trying to be. It was a particularly bad day when I had lost my wand for more than the fifth time. I also put too much fairy cream on my left wing, which just held me down. I flew in circles all day.
After moonlight meal, Dentitia pulled her acorn chair over to mine and said she had something important to talk to me about.
What had I done now?
“My wings are starting to wrinkle. I don't fly the way I used to. I probably only have another few summers before I won’t be able to work anymore.”
I looked into her eyes and saw happy tears, the sweet-smelling kind, starting to swell.
She continued, “I believe I have found my replacement and would need to start training her as soon as possible.”
I asked who she had chosen.
“You.”
My eyes almost popped like sunflower seeds.
She explained, “You have the sensibility and intelligence to be great. You will just need to learn geography and languages. You will then be able to feel and dream your way around the world.”
I don't know anything about teeth, I admitted.
“I'll teach you.”
But I don't know how to turn them into fairy dust, I insisted.
“I will show you.”
So, for the next several full moons, Dentitia flew by my side. We flew to the tops of forests, to the tops of mountains, to the tops of skyscrapers...and she never stopped talking!
At night, I lied on my petals under the skies, looking up at my lucky stars. Thank you, my heart pounded. I was on my way to becoming the next Tooth Fairy. I wanted to burst out the news all the way to the sunset.
“But, it is still your choice.” Dentitia held my hand one day. We were resting on a hanging leaf. The morning sun hung straight above us. “You have mastered your wand and weather patterns but there is still much to learn. If by the end of the next full moon, you decide you would not enjoy being a tooth fairy, you still have time to train for another role.”
For many sunrises, I tried to envision myself doing anything other than being a tooth fairy...
A medicinal fairy? No, back to the allergy problem.
A food fairy? I do like to gather grains. But, no, I like to eat twice as much. My wings would eventually never hold me.
An animal fairy? Not after the time the farmer's pig sniffed me into his nose.
What then? I pulled out a twig, dipped it in a blueberry and wrote down all my strengths. I wanted to see just what I must have been blossomed out to do.
Kind. Patient. Love children. Have good handwriting. Know North from South from East from West. Can speak three languages other than Fairy Secrets (English, Irish, Welsh) and am learning French.
A swift breeze woke me from my thoughts. Teacher Fairy's wind chime clinked and rang the end of the school day.
I flew over the stream, past the cattails and under the willow tree where I found Tooth Fairy. She was polishing last night's teeth. I had thought she turned them all into fairy dust.
“No, dear, only the brightest, purest, with no cavities are good enough for fairy dust. As for the others, I take out their fillings, clean them, shine them and make jewelry, dishes or sculptures.”
Tooth Fairy did have beautiful pearly necklaces and porcelain-white plates and bowls. On her bark coffee table, she had a uniquely-formed sculpture.
Was it the silhouette of a shadow?
“That is my prize-possession. One hundred fifty years ago, during my training, the Tooth Fairy had offered me this work of art. She had sculpted it from the very first tooth she'd found.”
It was lovely but I wasn’t sure what it was.
“It is to remind me of how to be gracious and kind, to value my work and the children for giving me their teeth.”
Children lose their teeth naturally. What else would they do with them?
“When the first baby tooth falls out, the child begins to grow out of babyhood. The children give a part of themselves away.”
Wow! I want to do this.
“I knew you would,” Tooth Fairy smiled.
I'm talking to myself again (to Allen Ginsberg) By Claire LeDoyen
QuailBellMagazine.com
Ginsberg!
fuckin’ Ginsberg!
i know you’re there, man,
i can’t write fast enough to you, Ginsberg.
GINSBERG! where did Whitman’s Beard lead you? where have you been hiding,
in fields of glitter and butterflies and green leaves of grass?
Ginsberg no one takes me as seriously as you do except Bukowski but he is drunk and asleep on the couch I can’t wake him up he was drinking expired beer and playing with his coleman lantern until three this morning, he told me was fucking crazy of the nutcase women that are drawn to him like whore-moths to a light.
Ginsberg did you ever ride shotgun across states in a cherry cherry-stem tying into knots chevy staring at the deliciously ugly brown and red and orange striped velvet interior carelessly caressing your fingertips along its slim skinny lines? i caught a glance of it shining in the delaware sun and it was beautiful for a second!
Ginsberg how do you feel about New York graffiti? every illegible complex shape pangs hard in my gut – i want to fight the man, ginsberg, i want to claim walls my own, take back the private police landscape. join me Allen, we’ll write earth-shattering verse onto train cars with bright pink spray-paint.
Ginsberg what did you use when you were out of matches?
if you were sitting in a nice, secluded grassy spot that smelled like dog shit would you move?
did you slap mosquitoes when they landed on the fleshy canvas of your skin?
Ginsberg, i got water in my lighter...
...Ginsberg the lighter’s working again it’s four hours later and i’m in a jimi hendrix shirt and my big brother’s red plaid and blue cotton boxers. the navy took him and forgot his underwear.
Ginsberg i can’t tell if this is to you or the audience, i desperately want it to be to you.
Ginsberg, the moon is gorgeous tonight and the stars are all silver twinkling clichés of romance and cosmic vibrations and mystical visions.
Ginsberg what do you do when you’ve lost the most beautiful touch, skin, muscles, state of being, thoughts and presence? and then what happens when you block the feeling off seal it up in concrete a little piece of your loveheart grey and just a bit withered and no one and no thing, no thought or sensation can make you come except a summer night’s breeze?
yet a warm wind has begun to howl tonight
pushing the pen into words
and forward.
the dark days are gone
By Claire LeDoyen
QuailBellMagazine.com
the dark days are gone
we shall live!
freely, bright,
spinning and traipsing and grinning
sticky grins
this is summer,
into the light and forward to life,
bursting like light bulbs,
we shall climb your mountains
pick the flowers at the top
and cartwheel down to the
next GREAT ADVENTURE
Extreme Dreaming for Beginners
By Elizabeth Kespel
QuailBellMagazine.com
I couldn’t awake and return to my real life, despite the memories which invaded my never-ending dreams: my father presiding over lords at feasts, my mother offering me a doll with emerald eyes, my nurse’s old-milk smell as she hugged me to her breast. Strongest of all was my memory of an old fairy woman whose angry eyes followed me everywhere, turning the dream into a cold nightmare. These images would fade, though, as I shed them like outgrown clothing.
On my right index finger, just beneath the nail, the skin burned with an ember that refused to heal. I couldn’t escape that painful twinge, no matter how many cooling dream cures I concocted.
I lived with that inconvenience, though it reminded with every flex of my hand that I had forgotten my real life, that I was trapped in this dream world. I learned to fly to the limits of my mind’s sky; I dove into lukewarm oceans, swimming downward until the icy water burned my frozen pores and my lungs strained for an intake of breath. Here, fairies didn’t hold a grudge against me just because my parents forgot to invite them to a celebration.
I knew that time passed in the real world when my memories came more frequently, like cattle returning home on mere instinct. Threaded wheels were spun by the angry fairy, whirring whenever I turned my back, only to disappear when I swung around to face them; spindles danced before me, making my finger throb as they thrust towards my dream-perfect flesh like a lustful animal.
And then, one day just like any of the thousands I had slept through, I woke to an infant’s cry. He was tiny, so small I could have held him in one hand. His hungry mouth was clasped around my finger, gums working to find some kind of nourishment. I pinched myself, and my vision cleared, and memories flooded my brain. The child coughed up a small piece of twine, just a sliver, and began to howl in tune with a second babe who rested, red-faced and miniscule, between my bloodied, tender thighs.
Once Upon a Death Wish
By Lore Lleixa
QuailBellMagazine.com
If appealing for a death wish gets me closer to master and away from this part of me that I hope you will never see, then so be it.
For all I want is to scatter you in all of the art forms there are, I want to take you where the light shines against your vacant eyes and your veins that never got a chance to give you life.
Will you ever remember the wish from a simple mortal?
Please just lie close to me, my hands of bone will feel your touch as my soul follows the scent of a sinless paradise.
I give my bleeding heart out for one reason so they can't love you more than me, I want to be part of this sinless perversion 'cause to me you're the twisted masterpiece that guides me through this hell of loveless affection that has me begging on my hands and knees.
I want to meet you again before one of us must go. You will never know what you have done to me, you will never know losing love from me. and you will never know a single day alone.
I am always waiting.
Demeter in Geneva
By Matt Roen
QuailBellMagazine.com
The International Human Cognate Consortium had convened in Geneva that fall. There, amid the dainty cotillions and regal banquets that filled the Royal Imperial Maritime Navy Hall, the latest and greatest technological marvels were being exhibited, demonstrated, and paraded. The star of the show was to be presented on the second-to-the-last night of the conference; a production by Dr. Ulfric Wood of the eponymous Wood Heuristics Organization in Glasgow, Northern Marineris, Mars.
The cream of society was whipped in that room; that titanic ballroom that looked over the opalescent frozen lawn. They strutted in their asymmetrical outfits, half-one-eye glasses in shades of vermillion and puce hovering in front of the hundreds of callipygian and curious faces. The veritable odeour of society seemed to exude through their ruffled ascots, and hip-hugging vacuum-pants. The strawberries were dry, the liqueurs were flat, and bio-synthetic chocolate fondue wells were boiling in flavors from peppermint to peach. At the top of the room, Dr. Ulfric Wood sat amid the crystal finery of the Royal family, and at the appointed hour: finished his swallow marsala, dabbed at his mouth with a dissolvable hanky, and began to tap the rim of his goblet with the dainty swallow fork.
“Citizens of the Empire, Distinguished Members of the I.H.C.C., Ladies, Gentlemen, Wobi-men, and Others. Thank you for receiving me this evening; I realize that your time is precious, and so I will do my best not to intrude overmuch. What I have to demonstrate for you tonight is perhaps the grandest advancement in the study of artificial intelligence in the last four centuries.” By the end of this introductory paragraph, most if not quite all of the hubbub in the room had subsided. Some correspondents were still sitting on benches against the wall, gesturing violently as they interfaced with the projected displays of their half-one-eyes, still muttering to their colleagues on Luna, or in the science canto of the International Space Station. Dr. Ulfric went on,
“It is with grave moral certitude that I posit this. And it is with identical pride that I give you the masterpiece of the Wood Heuristics Organization. Sirs, madams, ma’amsirs, and others; I present, Demeter!” He stood with this last word, arms flung up and out in celebratory presentation, as a thing entered from a door behind Ulfric, and stepped down the sloping floor of the ballroom. It walked with a regal rhythm, a battery of delicately spun thread legs dancing and tapping its way gently down the aisle, its chassis of glittering metal flourishing as a thousand tiny silver flaps fanned in and out as though with the motion of an ancient bellows. From its back extended an array of tiny lights and projectors that were all angled towards the visible gap where its head might rest. Through everyone’s half-one-eyes, the thing’s ‘face’ was presented as a series of angles. It was a crystalline structure (a hexeract it was called,) that folded in upon itself in smooth, wave-like motions. The projectors modulated the shape and coloration of the face, currently segueing through the ultra-violet end of the spectrum. Its edges glimmered in the projectors’ light, and the nearly silent operation of the assembly impressed itself upon the entirety of the consortium committee guests.
Rochester Cinderella
By Julia Lynn Weston
QuailBellMagazine.com
Once upon a time, in the historic, somewhat grimy city of Rochester, there was an unusual bar called Draghead, to which many adult citizens migrated after work.
Some came to drink, while others came for conversation. Even more came to dance to the insanely loud music that always filtered through the state-of-the-art stereo system. But all the patrons of Draghead had one common goal: they all wanted to catch a glimpse of the skinny girl who worked day and night.
Draghead was owned by a wealthy man named Francis. He was an ugly drunk, and was married to a woman named Kitta. She was a rather unattractive specimen of the female species. From a previous marriage, Kitta had two daughters. Jessica and Naomi were fat, fairly unattractive, and nasty. Both girls were convinced that they were two of Rochester's most attractive women, a delusion that was fostered by their mother.
Francis had a single daughter from his first wife, a girl named Ariane. She would have been the apple of her father's eye, but he was too wrapped up in the business to notice her.
Ariane was a lovely young woman. She was petite and slender, with curly, jet-black hair and large blue eyes. She had a lively personality and was sweet natured, and her step-relations hated her. Kitta forced her to dress in stained, ripped clothes. She had to work at the bar from sunset to sunrise, serving drinks and cleaning up spills and doing a thousand and one petty tasks for her stepmother. Jessica and Naomi never had to lift a finger. They dressed in outrageous clothing and went out with friends, while Ariane went on her hands and knees all over Draghead.
I Was a Worm By Christine Stoddard
QuailBellMagazine.com
Cement devoured the orchids,
And crushed the sparrow's nest---
Consuming the willow seed and drowning the squirrel.
Rainbows withered into skyscrapers,
Into pop-up houses and factories,
Into government buildings, schools, and churches brandishing graffiti.
Years ago, I was a worm
Fleshy pink and wet with dirt
I took comfort in the soil with the deaf, with the blind
Summer seeped through the soil,
melting through pebbles and twigs to worm beds below.
The world was shrouded in black, with nothing to see,
only to feel: the cool clay beneath my belly
and the still September air creeping
through my lungs.
Grass roots tickled my back as I burrowed through the ground,
finally reaching the end of the tunnel
and tumbling into a bowl of dirt below.
I became tangled with my neighbor's bodies.
I knew nothing of them, save for the texture of their skin;
they were all the same: silky, slimy, and smooth.
There, blindness was a blessing.
Now I am a doorknob---
The doorknob bolted on the front of city hall.
Turn me left, Turn me right---
Either way, the land remains the same,
Caked in brick and plywood.
Cement devoured the orchids,
And crushed the sparrow's nest---
Consuming the willow seed and drowning the squirrel.
Rainbows withered into skyscrapers,
Into condominiums and empty libraries,
Into silent apartments, post offices, and buzzing police stations.
Years ago, I was a worm, child.
Years ago, I was a worm.
Quills & Quails
By QB Quill
QuailBellMagazine.com
it’s so late now and
my body is tired but
my mind, it soars high
the water was just
a bit too cold, sucking the
air right from your lungs
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