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Immigrants Make America Great AgainThe Breadcrumbs widget will appear here on the published site.
SeattleWords by Rick Hartwell Image by Claudio Parentela QuailBellMagazine.com *Editor's Note: Was previously published in Empirical Magazine. It would be dissembling to say that Seattle in the 1960s was still a brawling, sprawling frontier town of Canada and Alaska, and yet there is truth in that. Then, the city lay promiscuously just against the coast; sinuously wrapped around Puget Sound to the west and only beginning to slowly reach out to embrace Lake Washington to the east. Her harlot’s arms reached up, past UW, towards Mountlake Terrace and on out to Fort Lawton, while her legs entwined Renton and lazily stretched towards Tacoma. Her curves and breasts and mound were formed by the hills of downtown. She beckoned multitudes, as she had since the Alaskan Gold Rush, but most of those had used her as a casual interlude on their way to something else. By the late mid-century Seattle showed the signs of her abuse. Her trollop’s paint was smearing and faded and her limbs were becoming laced with the varicose veins of freeways and highways and industry. She was no longer the virgin of the Northwest.
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BirthWords by Rick Hartwell Image by Claudio Parentela QuailBellMagazine.com *Editor's Note: This was previously published in Jumping Blue Gods. I’m contemplating the give and take of birth as I look down at the pail under the delivery table. It is not centered and the blood and birth fluids seeping from my second wife miss the mark and splatter on the linoleum floor expanding in an ever-widening lake that reflects the bottom of the delivery table and wife together.
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Refugees Are Welcome Here
By The Quail Bell Crew
QuailBellMagazine.com
The following photos are pictures our founding editor took at Battery Park's rally and march for refugees and immigrants in New York City on January 29, 2017.
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StrongBy Gulnaz Saiyed QuailBellMagazine.com *Editor's Note: This piece has been previously published on the author's Medium blog. I sometimes joke that I have Spongebob Arms.
Spongebob lifts stuffed animals when he works out, so his arms are always popping right off when he tries to pick up anything of substance. The Breadcrumbs widget will appear here on the published site.
The Breadcrumbs widget will appear here on the published site.
A Story of ManipulationManipulation: Is it in human nature?
Manipulation is not a so common word but if you talk to any one, he/she will definitely tell you that once in my life a situation arose and someone ( very near or known) tried to use me taking advantage of my situation, and will tells about his/her weaknesses and bravery while facing such situations, and mostly these situations as described by the people are most humiliating moments of life. The Breadcrumbs widget will appear here on the published site.
Inauguration DayThis is for the drag queens on Christopher Street.
This is for the black boy joy called “showtime” on the uptown/downtown 1 2 3. This is for the 8th grade boys and girls in Brownsville, who are scared of what the world will look like by the time they graduate high school. The Breadcrumbs widget will appear here on the published site.
It’s the End of the World as We Know It.Words by Gulnaz Saiyed QuailBellMagazine.com *Editor's Note: This piece has been previously published on the author's Medium blog. I graduated from college in 2008 — four years before the world was meant to end. I started off as a senior with an acceptance into Tulane’s MA in English program that would let me receive my degree in one additional year, one step toward my PhD in English Literature with a focus on postcolonial Muslim women writers. I left that school year having dropped the program, my life packed up to become an 8th grade English/Language Arts teacher in Texas’ Rio Grande Valley with Teach for America.*
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'The Most Appealing Target in the World': My Trip to D.C. on Inauguration Day
It is 6:30 a.m. and the coat-folk are gathered on the open-air platform of the Franconia-Springfield Metro station. They wear the red hat with white text:
“MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN” It could come in the reverse permutation of red text on white canvas. This is far less common. The Breadcrumbs widget will appear here on the published site.
5 Foolproof Ways To Date Yourself Every DayWanna fall in love? Then do it with the only person who will always with you: yourself! Start dating yourself now, embrace true self-love, and kiss every bad date “goodbye” before they ever get the nerve to ask you out! But whatever you do, don’t listen to the bad love advice given in Salt Lake City’s most epic failure of a homework assignment!
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Marching in Solidarity from My HomeI am a woman who lives in the Washington DC, but did not attend the Women’s March on Washington. But from the minute that I saw a Facebook event be created about the Women’s March on Washington to the very moment that I was at home watching it on TV, I have felt nothing more than completely involved with the rally to stand up for human’s rights, love, and peace. The Breadcrumbs widget will appear here on the published site.
Anti-Trump Protesters Take to Richmond Streets
RICHMOND – More than 100 demonstrators marched through Richmond on Friday evening to protest the inauguration of Donald Trump as the 45th president of the United States.
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We're Not Going Anywhere
Compiled by The Quail Bell Crew
QuailBellMagazine.com
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Live From New York on Jan. 21, 2017
By The Quail Bell Editors
QuailBellMagazine.com
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Elegy in Long FormBy A.D. Carr QuailBellMagazine.com ..But writing has not yet helped me to see what it means.
-Joan Didion, “The White Album” When it became clear that there was no path to victory, I collapsed in tears. The Breadcrumbs widget will appear here on the published site.
Looking Back, Looking ForwardBy Kaylin Kaupish QuailBellMagazine.com January 20, 2017
On this day, I find myself looking back. To the last time I watched an Inauguration. I remember I was in chemistry class and my teacher turned the lights off. She brought the large projection screen down and fiddled with the remote. A student had to get up and help her put it on the right setting. The room was so dark and I was smiling in it. I felt safe in it. Cocooned in warmth. I wrapped my sweater around me and leaned forward on my desk. The Breadcrumbs widget will appear here on the published site.
RIP Wayne BarrettYou can’t talk about Wayne Barrett without talking about Trump. You could talk about Koch and Barrett, Giuliani and Barrett, or anyone Wayne wrote about, but Trump is the notable one. Wayne Barrett himself said, “And so, you know, I’m in a sickbed a lot, but [Trump] gets me up out of it.”
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It’s Inauguration Day, So Let’s Get Active A nation is defined not by its government but by its people. It is inevitable that there will be periods of our lives that our beliefs will stand in stark contrast to those in power. In those times it is important to stand strong and fight for the continuation of the ideals that you believe define our country with diligence and resolve.
I hope I am not naïve in my belief that many of the issues we face in the coming years – a failing healthcare system, a rapidly declining middle class, an unlivable minimum wage – are truly bipartisan. Washington is now calling for a unification of our country, but passive compliance will not give healthcare to an uninsured mother with cancer or food in the bellies of the working class being buried under debt. We do need to unify, but our unification must come through the resonance of our voices demanding a brighter future. A country whose government suppresses the voices of the people is a country that has compromised its integrity and has strayed from its mission to serve and protect its citizens. The Breadcrumbs widget will appear here on the published site.
From the Mind of Claudio ParentelaEditor's Note: We have recently published several works by Italian artist Claudio Parentela. Born in 1962, Parentela is a multi-talented and completely self-taught illustrator, painter, photographer, cartoonist and collagist. We were curious about the man who creates pieces so perfectly suited to the words and stories we publish here at Quail Bell, so we asked him to provide a short statement about his approach to art. Below is an edited version of what he provided. "I pursue my art and my art follows me. Together, we mix in infinite and never finished ways. Now, more than ever. I like the unfinished, the incomplete. It makes you think. It arouses dismay and it leaves you in doubt and that process gives you joy. I love contrasts, the knots of the soul. I like to melt them and to knot them and then dissolve them again and again. For 15 years, I painted only in black and white with rivers of black Indian ink. I love black Indian ink. I love the many shades between white and black. They are like the shades of the soul. Now I have developed a love for colors mere shades from one another: gray, purple, deep blue. I love to photograph my emotions and your emotions—the strong, the lewd, the tender, the sweet, the haunting, and, yes, the most twisted of emotions. I love to photograph my installations and my collages. I combine and muddle them in the lens, mixing them into a thousand new and unknown ways. I love to experiment with everything I have on hand, with everything that happens to me, everything that I see, everything that I listen to, everything that I feel that I feel. Photography is my old, long-time, never-ending love. It gives me endless opportunities to express myself and to expand my research, opening doors that I did not know even existed. Those doors materialize in the lens at a precise moment and lead me somewhere new. In my works, there are traces of Sai Baba, Aurobindo, my beloved Tarots, Shirley Horn, Patty Waters, Nina Simone, Diamanda Galas, Sarah Vaughan, Throbbing Gristle, Peter Green, Miles Davis, Alexander McQueen, John Galliano, Walter van Beirendonck, Robert Crumb, Bruce LaBruce, Harmony Korine, Genesis P-Orridge, Vaginal Davis, and others. I like to dirty my photos with others media—with everything really—to color them, to lighten them, to darken them, to light them. Then I turn them into something else that is not photography, that is not collage. I don't know what it is and I do not want to know." See samples of Claudio's art for Quail Bell Magazine at these links:
www.quailbellmagazine.com/the-unreal/poem-in-april-we-born-and-sprout www.quailbellmagazine.com/the-unreal/poetry-a-poem-of-grief-broken-limbs www.quailbellmagazine.com/the-unreal/poem-the-vanishing-muse www.quailbellmagazine.com/the-unreal/fiction-absinthe The Breadcrumbs widget will appear here on the published site.
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