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Thread Dreams #Unreal #Sewing #Embroidery #Craft #MaterialStudies #MaterialCulture #Fabric #Toas #NewMexico Visit our shop and subscribe. Sponsor us. Submit and become a contributor. Like us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter. The Breadcrumbs widget will appear here on the published site.
epistles to hans christian andersen Words by Emma Louise Backe Image by Rachel Gierlach QuailBellMagazine.com 1.
the gnaw and growl of danger always half- lucid in your stories i read as a child make me think the moon is sneering at me. it’s incredible how often you walk into an elevator and find it no longer there, learning there’s little safety in words or the time you spend spinning thread around your fingers. some staircases seem to spiral into secret folds in the sky, make you prone to falling. what sort of leer did you hold upon your face in the groundless parts of the night when you spread powder upon your sheaves glimmering with fresh ink and found your nose dusted with disenchantment? 2. why sea foam? why solubility of spirit in the wake of heart break, the sea water and bracken dissolving on the crucifix hanging outside a fisherman’s lodge? did the mermaid sigh when her scales entered the cascade, tears furling like pearls, like rosary beads to the ship’s bow? 3. what is that leaking out of the back of my head? can you save it in a bottle for a rainy day or use it to lubricate the railroad tracks through Minsk where they buried skeletons among the rattle? sometimes i find myself spilled all over the place, but you seem to have ointment and unctions for these kinds of conditions-- a hot sleep beneath straw, woolen blankets and a roaring fire you had to starve for. The Breadcrumbs widget will appear here on the published site.
Mud Frogs Herons peck small fish. Briar stars verging on fruit glisten in damp Meadows. With a Paintbrush you mark the stretched canvas of skin with early summer. Another flower-stained fox lurks in shadows. Drags of pollywogs line the mud-- small daughters transforming into mud frogs. #Unreal #Poetry #Nature #Life #Summer #Imagery #Childhood Visit our shop and subscribe. Sponsor us. Submit and become a contributor. Like us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter. The Breadcrumbs widget will appear here on the published site.
Spill-O, Out on the Town Spill-O took Carnegie Hall by storm, and what a waste of time it was. The restless feet, shuffling pages, whispering, and the constant tide of breath and phlegm drowned out the music. From this fog of unknowing, the car ads in the concert program bragged that there are no rules about what you can do. But they ignored the part where there’s no rules about what can be done to you. The wheezing and the music left Spill-O fundamentally unmoored, sprinting to the womb and back again because of what he found there. His heart snapped instead of beating and the telephones’ busy signal ascended heavenward infinitely. And Spill-O started to live, to finally see as if the sky was crumbling. He hit the town. But the streets were empty, all the people busy, indoors, gearing up to die of old age. #Unreal #Poetry #Photography #Spill-O #Solitude #Self-Awareness #Conformity #Rebel Visit our shop and subscribe. Sponsor us. Submit and become a contributor. Like us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter. The Breadcrumbs widget will appear here on the published site.
Nightmare i was born from the death of a flickering candle. A wisp of wind had slipped in through the crack of a windowsill & curled upward to meet the burning Flame. In a hushed snuff i was brought into this world–– plunging me deep in darkness––still bathing me in the silky shadows of your mind… i was created & as i place a hand on your warm head you drift off to sleep. You expect dreams of Wonderland and Alice, but you find, to your utter dismay, that you are tormented by years of yesterday. i silently weep & i watch them fall––my tears... for my existence brings no one pleasure no one will ever care So i wait for Her––Dream––that Sweet Girl... The Beauty in the night The Flame that Brings the Light The Gentle Touch to my malice… A Creature of a Different Kind i hear Her now as She turns the handle, pushing past the pain just to reach your most Precious Treasure bringing it forth through the dead Dreams i have given you Yes, it is true i am the nightmare Never Loved, always hated #Unreal #Poetry #Photography #Homosexuality #Struggle #HumanCondition #Imagery Visit our shop and subscribe. Sponsor us. Submit and become a contributor. Like us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter. The Breadcrumbs widget will appear here on the published site.
Last Picnic Citronella candles smoked Gouda crackers, sturdy and dry red seedless grapes pitted olives wine two plastic cups (though if you forget these we can pass the bottle) A round ripe cantaloupe summer sausage a new paring knife duct tape (to repair the basket broken last time) matches to set it all aflame #Unreal #Poetry #Summer #Friends #Feast #Imagery #Love Visit our shop and subscribe. Sponsor us. Submit and become a contributor. Like us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter. The Breadcrumbs widget will appear here on the published site.
Crisp Green, Leatherbound Saltwater stasis of Arctic glacial ice, frozen and morose, lifts morning, pushing it to rejection, to get out of bed and it becomes the underside of ten workboots thumping away in a quarry, turning cliffs into granite chunks of kettle corn with the flip of a switch and the energy of an explosion. The whistler’s signal changes shifts and it’s now the dark space under a mansion’s kitchen sink where the dish soap has festered, crusted, lost its color – and more importantly - its scent of Paradise Gardens lost, too. Soon a child will accidentally ingest it because it doesn’t smell, taste, or act like soap. Before they pump her three-year-old stomach (for the first time but not the last) she will taste the funk of waking up after drinking far too much whiskey, feeling the weight of gravity will force her knees to give way and the whole thing starts over, fingernails following grooves on a golden record exploring the music of empty hurtling through space on the side of Voyager I. #Unreal #Poetry #Photography #Circular #Evolving #Life #Lessons #Habits #HumanCondition Visit our shop and subscribe. Sponsor us. Submit and become a contributor. Like us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter. The Breadcrumbs widget will appear here on the published site.
Too Little Salt, Too Much Sea Words by Srishti Dutta Chowdhury Image by Randi Ward QuailBellMagazine.com sun-dried kite swept aside my tear seeped linen, when you sent your potbellied moon to shine on my pockmarked face sent me riding waves when i asked for candy-smelling summer rains sent me life beneath your crooked smile, the eye of storms in coffee cups sent me happiness capped like a ship in your glass jar that croaked, a prisoner-of-war stuck in reverse your poetry like your stones aimed for the sky your teethmarked bones ached for a lie and while you slept lowly clouds-a-rumbling, i detached your radio wires upset the moccasin shelf before rushing out-a-tiptoe, squashing lemon-tart-fed-red-rats spoiling garden wisteria by your window-pane as, dreaming of sun-brimming newer lives, i stood, rattling chains against my heart feeling too close to your panting happiness feeling the room too small for two when in your brown plastered bed enclosed in nicotinised arms happiness felt too small, our carousal ride was never meant to be this long such a shame, thus, my shoes that fill with your thoughts never quite reach my breast-pockets where i keep your prized ship-in-a-glass-jar hunger before happiness, it stands with me. #Unreal #Poetry #Imagery #Love #Relationships #Unrequited Visit our shop and subscribe. Sponsor us. Submit and become a contributor. Like us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter. The Breadcrumbs widget will appear here on the published site.
Desert Storm Editor's Note: This story was originally published in Whurk. I did not lose the baby—she died. There was never any question about where she was. First she was inside of me and then she was in the toilet. She didn't hide. She didn't run away. I never had to phone a search party. When she called my womb home, I felt her. When my body expelled her like poison, I saw her. I always knew exactly where she was.
We did not try again for a year because that meant putting his cock where she had been last. Trying again would mean replacing her and I was still sorting out what had happened. One day I was pregnant and the next day I wasn't. I couldn't figure out the cause, only the effect. He said I would be my normal self again if only I said yes. But I kept saying no, and soon he was the one who would break down sobbing because blue-veined cheeses go with gin and stout, didn't I know that? Or the lint roller belongs in the top left drawer, so why was I putting it in the top right? The first time we embraced in all those months was right after I downed too much Moscato because I had grown cheap and childish. Even though his first thrust was hesitant and shy, I thought he had punched my cervix. When I squirmed, he dotted my forehead with kisses and I froze. The next thrust was faster, bolder. Each thrust went harder, deeper. A voice told me to lunge for his neck, so I heeded the call and bit him like in the old days before she died. He bit me back. At one point we established a rhythm, an understanding. The last thing I remember before falling asleep was suppressing a tiny burp that tasted like semen and sweet wine. The next morning, I did my hair. I did my make-up. I put on my most beautiful Oscar de la Renta. I left the house and I walked the way elegant people walk in old movies. I noticed birds and sunshine and little white flowers pushing out from the sidewalks of Washington. I even noticed little boys playing catch in their front yard without cringing. It was Tuesday in Tenleytown and I headed to Chevy Chase on foot. I joked that I wouldn't get there until Thursday and had a real chuckle. Not a polite one. An actual chuckle. The Breadcrumbs widget will appear here on the published site.
Rattlesnake Words by Katie Eber QuailBellMagazine.com The rattlesnake coils in the coronas a venomous sunflower a sandy thorn and he strikes teeth forward visceral open and he tears sinks fang into my ankle —snap! I wince and he withdraws with tail shakes anxiety overtakes his spine my blood still dripping from his mouth He whimpers recoil back scared of the silent holler of the night of the moon of the stars of the desert baking in the sun. #Unreal #Poetry #Instinct #Impulse # Diction #Imagery #Rattlesnakes #Vipers #VenomousSnakes Visit our shop and subscribe. Sponsor us. Submit and become a contributor. Like us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter. |