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After It Fledges
By James Dunham
QuailBellMagazine.com
Autumn fog rolled like rivers between the mountains, fading the grasses and shrubs to boulder gray as Anika carried a basket of clothes down the glade’s east end, through barley and wheat fields and around high rocks in the fog, toward the stream—odd that she couldn’t hear its water. Not for the first time, a heat in her abdomen swelled to her chest and neck, the sweat sticking her tunic to her skin. As summer had settled to autumn, she’d failed to convince Berke, her would-be suitor, what this heat and the lengthening spells between bleeding told her: her body had given up childbearing. She might bleed again in a moon or two, or never, but Berke held out foolish hope. Behind her, crowded where the mountain’s forested slope briefly leveled out, the thatched houses of the village receded into the cold, thick air. The stream was too quiet. Anika set down her basket and knelt at the edge of the water.
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Art of Casar Valtierra
Cesar Valtierra is a graphic designer, illustrator, and visual artist with 10 plus years experience, and is also the creator of graphic novel mystery series Tony Balazo, chronicling a dapper detective on his many adventures.
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We Are Fierce
I have a voice;
& it will no longer be a post it note pasted to my wall like a hibernating butterfly-- The Breadcrumbs widget will appear here on the published site.
Sound of the Night Creatures
I survived in the ripe of the young. My flesh didn’t hang down, dried out into wrinkles and scars, like the faces of my elders from their older years. And my eyes gazed toward the moons, into the dome-world that surrounded me. The entirety of a creation, from the starlight to the swaying of clouds, seemed like it all formed in that very moment. But I still lived as Nobody, as a nameless one.
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Five Poems
by L. Ward Abel
QuailBellMagazine.com
A Dry Equinox Before October
(to Randy Newman) Vermouth coats the pasture The olives lose their way Summer wanes these last few days It needs to rain Ceiling fans turn from here To Charlotte back again Down Baton Rouge in unison They drink too much they laugh too loud. The Breadcrumbs widget will appear here on the published site.
The Lover's Echo
In you
everything dies and so everything finds – a moment of stillness. Love bereaved of its place and blessing, this body echoes with the resonance of once luminous transcendence. The Breadcrumbs widget will appear here on the published site.
The Hick and His Wife
by Joanna Kadish
QuailBellMagazine.com
The place they’d chosen for us to meet turned out to be a funky roadside bar a few miles down Highway 9, on a desolate stretch not far from Freehold, a few hours south of Manhattan in New Jersey. It was more ramshackle than the pictures on the Internet showed: a barn on the verge of falling apart, cracks and splinters everywhere. It was a hundred years old at least, and looked more like an ancient dwelling for farm animals that someone had attempted to refurbish, and stopped halfway. It hadn’t been fully brought to life; something was missing.
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Tumble On HomeBilly Berman liked Florida fine. He didn’t care much for the humidity, nor did he enjoy the gators at the swamps. Just the thought of gators made Billy panic. He was prone to panic attacks. Panic attacks were actually how Billy maintained his figure (though, in fairness, his figure was not very impressive). Despite his distaste for humidity, cold weather gave Billy congestion. So he made his choice. In Florida, he learned to love old people, hate vacationers, and to speak Spanish. He wasn’t fluent, but he got by. He could understand Spanish better than he could speak it. The Breadcrumbs widget will appear here on the published site.
Fourth of July HomecomingOld Scott’s Mill had given off odd sounds since the day it closed down. Now it gave off a sense of passage. All the way back to the last Fourth of July, the boys had saved a cache of fireworks. The three pals, Snag and Chris and Charlie B, all 12 years old, within three days of each other. "Pals to the end," they had said, squirreling away the fireworks in Snag's Aunt Lil's barn, leaning away from one century and into another. And many times, those same hidden articles promised to smoke and explode from their secret hideaway, the boys' want for noise and excitement so strong at times, at times like hunger tantrums. But they had saved them for a special occasion. "Promise made is promise kept," Snag had said on Veterans' Day, his voice hard as wire, though the tantrum pummeled alive in his gut. The Breadcrumbs widget will appear here on the published site.
The PrisonerThe sound came once more. He stiffened. It was closer. His whole body knew it was closer. It wasn‘t just in the hearing. It approached. It made inroads. It said so. The metal toe. The kick. The slash. Ping Too smiling through his teeth. Oh, would Ping have a thirst for amontillado! Oh, were he himself the finest of stone masons, setting Ping Too up for the full sentence, "to make an end of my labour," to force the last stone into place, to set the best of mortar, forever. Caught between the professor and the captain! He hoped E. A. Poe stayed with him. Again. |