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"A Strong Kentucky Woman"By Belle Byrd QuailBellMagazine.com Let me introduce you to Alison Lundergan Grimes, who knows life is harder than Little House. She built a "soddy" with strong hands, not as "an empty dress" hovering above the bluegrass. This here is a pioneer woman like Rebecca Boone, rifle in hand for the mean mountain wolves. That's how she grew up—smart and proud—but now she must face the wolves of Washington. Big teeth, big tail, red beams shooting from their skulls, panting with heavy-tongued mouths. Those wolves don't feast on cans of Spam or Beefaroni for their fine District dinner. Look at them hairy tails thumping and bumping and killing babies with a twitch. Missus, you're riding your covered wagon, yelling at those mules, stuck at an Appalachian pass. McConnell crouches on the cliff above, dumping pails of mud so you'll never leave Lexington. "I'm gettin' Grimes grimy," he heehaws. "Grimy Grimes! That sorry dirty woman creature!" You could take him out with your pistol, even a slingshot, if you had less charity in you. Knock out his eye; blow a hole in his cheek! Go on, cowgirl, distort his every feature! You've been fighting for this moment. Ignore those Republicans as they hiss 'Boo!' They're nothing but slugs on a log and you? Why, you're a "strong Kentucky woman." #KentuckyPolitics #USSenate #AnEmptyDress #GenderPolitics #SenateRace #Government #AlisonLunderganGrimes Visit our shop and subscribe. Sponsor us. Submit and become a contributor. Like us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter.
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The Angel of DeathBy Adreyo San QuailBellMagazine.com In the valley of children, that beautiful valley that wakes to the sight of the mountains, there lived a sad, silent girl whose eyes had a strange and haunting beauty. She went about her quiet ways, down her sweet and solitary paths, unnoticed by the other girls. And yet, when they fell on the hockey field, or caught a cold, or were suddenly vexed by the troublesome qualities of that strange creature called Life, she would appear silently at their side. She would sing to them and bring them wild flowers and tuck solemn little dolls under their pillows. And the girls would close their exhausted eyes and fall into a happy sleep.
In all the valley of the children, the little girl had only one friend, an older girl who only liked to teach and play football. They called her the headmistress. The headmistress longed for those moments when she could hold the girl in her lap and kiss her gentle, pained face. The little girl gave her her strange and peaceful silence and wandered away to lie on the dewy grass and spin shawls out of the stirred firmament of the sky. But she always came back, with palaces made of grass and scepters that were once branches from the oak tree’s hidden empire. Sometimes she brought back a child, squat and blankly terrified, who would gape at the headmistress in perplexed wonder. These children learnt to love the headmistress with a steady affection and went away to become beautiful women who parceled their daughters with anxious eyes and sent them to the only home they had ever known. Your mother was one of them. And one day, the silent girl became a silent woman with the kind of aching beauty that somehow slips unseen through crowds unaware of such sorrow. The silent woman left the valley and became the quiet student at the corner of college classrooms who occasionally stunned her classmates with the quiet wisdom of her voice. She became the solitary creature on the neglected park bench, nursing a cup of coffee with her white hands as she stared at the plaintive sky. Quarrelsome old women yanked at her arms and angry boys with no homes kicked at her feet. She turned her silent eyes to them and began to sing that strange Romany she had learned on her mother’s lap. She spoke to them of all she had learnt in the valley of the children, all that lost wisdom that snakes its way through the lonely primroses and the thorny roses to the last resting place of the Raven Queen. The Breadcrumbs widget will appear here on the published site.
Her AgainThe process of creating "Her Again", originally featured here. Painter and video artist Bri Cirel received her Bachelor's degree in Film and Media from the California College of Arts. Bri is currently building a collection of oil paintings, while also pursuing video arts in the form of no budget music videos and time lapsed painting shorts. Painting out of LA, Bri worked as a resident artist for a movie prop house in Hollywood where she painted decorative works and designed custom dressings for set backdrops. #Art #Film #Process #ArtistProcess #HerAgain #MarilynMonroe #BriCirel Visit our shop and subscribe. Sponsor us. Submit and become a contributor. Like us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter.
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Marital Bliss in the KeystoneBy The Sparrow Goddess QuailBellMagazine.com Previously the City of Brotherly Love said brothers could not love each other in that way. Platonically, as heterosexual men, dating, engaged to, or married to women—never gay. But today the men of Pennsylvania may wed each other: man vowing to honor man. And the same goes for women: Cherish the woman you love and fear no legal ban. Same-sex marriage is now legal in Pennsylvania. Read today's CNN story. #GayMarriage #SameSexMarriage #GayLove #GayRelationships #GayRights #LGBT #LGBTQ Visit our shop and subscribe. Sponsor us. Submit and become a contributor. Like us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter.
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Going Past the MagicIn the beginning, everything is magic. Through innocent eyes, with little understood, little explained, things are astounding, while being perfectly normal. The harmonica-playing man riding past on his unicycle is real. I know him. He lives in my grandmother’s house; he’s one of her nephews. When I stay overnight at my grandmother’s house, I have turtle-shaped pancakes for breakfast. The sumac trees growing in a clump behind her house are a miniature forest, and I, a giant. Life, indeed, is magic. I know how to pretend. I have more fun pretending than adults have in being real.
What is reality? Is the disintegration of my teddy bear from a laundry mishap the same realness as the death of an unmet grandfather? I know my tears at the loss of the favorite companion are real, but I don’t know what to feel for the absent grandfather. And is the silent uncle who gives me my favorite dolls and dollhouses as sinister as my parents believe? All I know is that my father and he exchanged blows and stopped being brothers. Is Poor Willie, the town recluse in his ancient windowless car, really poor, or does he just prefer to eat lettuce from the grocery dumpster? In the beginning of one’s life, there is an absence of truth, because there is an absence of reality. I don’t know what is possible, or what is improbable. I’m a child. Such unknowing makes a fertile setting for magic. Or it can breed the monster under the bed. And that is why a day is a year to a child. During my play with stiff cardboard paper dolls, names printed on their bases, my hairdresser mother gives a townswoman a permanent. It’s what mother does, and I assume, wrongly, that she enjoys doing it. Suddenly, I hear “Help! Help!” coming from somewhere down the street. Mother and her customer appear to be deaf to the urgent call. I step onto the front landing and hear the plea again. I jump onto my pale green Schwinn with red stripes and orchid accents and race toward the sound. I will, I decide, go watch the lady with the opera voice get rescued (for rescue is the only scenario I can imagine). My bike, Betsy, is full-sized, while I am tiny. I have to stand on the pedals to pump her. I’ve already forgotten the painful early lessons from the days before I knew how to ride the bike, when I would brake and fall against the handlebars. I speed toward the demanding cries, past the house with the talking crow. Past the house of the boy who wears skirts with more flounces than I have ever worn. Past the welded gate comprised of iron tools. These have become normal things, while someone in distress is not normal. The Breadcrumbs widget will appear here on the published site.
So Long, SolangeBy M. Alouette QuailBellMagazine.com I called it my media detox, where I'd seek refuge in a mossy gully and huddle up to a fox. No television, no gossip rags, and most of all no net but a fishing net to catch my dinner. I would emerge from the woods a week later, mentally and spiritually refreshed, a winner. All I needed was a backpack's worth of goods and the desire for reform, something purer. I trekked out on a Wednesday morn, my mind's inner box expanding until it tore apart. Sunshine had found me. Birdsong had found me. And Mother Nature wooed my heart. Until that night I came upon a noisy group of fellow city folk chittering by the cascade. "Solange!" one cried. "Jay Z!" shouted the other. And soon I learned of the leaked video. Nothing could protect me–not memories of marmalade spread on toast in the meadow. That damn celebrity story replaced all gnomes in my head with Beyoncé's angry face. #Solange #JayZ #Beyonce #CelebrityGossip #Drama #TheirFamily Business #AllIWantedWasToGetAway Visit our shop and subscribe. Sponsor us. Submit and become a contributor. Like us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter.
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Zero Fucks for You and a Million for MeBy Starling Root QuailBellMagazine.com Hey my darling, my life, O cliché O cliché O clichéd captain of my heart, Hey donkey [ass] that pulls my cart toward the sunset in pursuit of everlasting love-- You are, no words, just butterflies and rainbows in a Britany Spears music video, and cheap, corny tattoos of Backstreet Boys lyrics: "I don't care who you are Where you're from What you did As long as you love me" Pssh. C'mon? What do I look like? A basic bitch? You thought your scheme would go off without a hitch? You told Reddit I was a "big girl" ("not meaning offense") Guess what some blokes dig? Big. Big breasts. Big butt. Big brain. Not you, bloke. I quote your Reddit post (again): "Eventually I realised that the best thing for me to do would be to open up the relationship or break up with my girlfriend." That night you got down on one knee, I thought you were going to propose. Or at least eat me out. And you prosed, all right. You proposed an open relationship. My goodness...Dear me...Sob, sob. Two weeks later? Golly...sure. I'd play the game and win. So I set up my FetLife account and ordered up some beefcake. The number one combo with fries and dick, please. Look at all the pretty boys' comments on my selfies. What a crowd! Say hello to my fans, boyfriend sweet! Now I'm a hit, just like Christina Aguilera. And they all rub me the right way. But you're just as much of a loser as you were when it was just you and me. Only I didn't notice then because of, well, butterflies and rainbows. I would apologize, but it seems that this was meant to be. Zero fucks for you and—swell!—a million for me. Dumpy-doo, dumpy-doo, bye-bye to you. Maybe print your Reddit letter as a keepsake, a momento to your hypocritical jealousy. #FetLife #OKCupid #OpenRelationship #Hookups #StrangerSex #Dating #RandomMen #SoMuchSex #JealousAsshole Visit our shop and subscribe. Sponsor us. Submit and become a contributor. Like us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter.
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Layers of DeconstructionI am interested in what artists are making, what they are saying, and what they are not saying. More artists, people, and marketing campaigns producing visuals then ever before creates a barrage of imagery that is confused in purpose and intention. Breaking down visuals is a knee jerk reaction for me. I sift through the propaganda and buried context behind images and try to understand what is attempting to be communicated. My painting style echoes this approach. I use layers of images in a manner that is initially seen as a whole, but deconstructs into separate elements upon further inspection. I use text in my paintings to deliver commentary while also utilizing the font’s graphic qualities to distort the image. All information is in plain sight but organized in a way that hides from the viewer at first glance. I feel compelled to explore repetitive imagery in art, such as Marylyn Monroe or female nudes, because I am interested in why artists choose to represent these subjects over and over again. Similarly, I have compulsions to work with imagery with established context rather than pull from my raw imagination. I feel visual communication is so vast that by utilizing the established context behind recognizable imagery, I can more clearly examine the principles of the visual language and use what I learn with purpose and intention. Painter and video artist Bri Cirel received her Bachelor's degree in Film and Media from the California College of Arts. Bri is currently building a collection of oil paintings, while also pursuing video arts in the form of no budget music videos and time lapsed painting shorts. Painting out of LA, Bri worked as a resident artist for a movie prop house in Hollywood where she painted decorative works and designed custom dressings for set backdrops. #FeaturedArtist #BriCirel #Deconstruction #Art #Paintings #FemaleFigures #Nudes #Text #MarilynMonroe Visit our shop and subscribe. Sponsor us. Submit and become a contributor. Like us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter.
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Where to go for Quail Bell Crew news?Our About blog is the source for Quail Bell Magazine's latest happenings. Check it out today. #OurEvents #LiteraryEvents #ArtEvents #WashingtonDC #RVA #DMV #NYC #Bmore #Philly #Screenings #Workshops Visit our shop and subscribe. Sponsor us. Submit and become a contributor. Like us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter.
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Emmaline and AlanderBy Brooke Bartleson QuailBellMagazine.com 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 herself some wine and they sat and talked. It wasn’t long before they started to bicker, and they crumpled Emmaline up and threw her out. Now the water fell hot on her skin and washed off the mascara and blush she donned for her paper acquaintances, but it did not wash away what was wrong inside her brain. She took the scissors and dragged them across her wrist, sawing through skin… and veins… and muscle…The shower went dark around her, and the blood that washed away down the drain did not change the color of the water in the ocean. Slowly, Emmaline opened her heavy little eyelids. She was wrapped in a towel and her head rested in her mother’s lap while she gently dried Emmaline’s ears with a Q-Tip. Her mother had just given her a bath. It was Wednesday; she didn’t have kindergarten on Wednesdays. The sun was shining. III The children lived a block apart, their street wound around the edges of an oak forest. Emmaline was good at smiling, she was good at playing by herself, and she was good at playing with other kids at school. She was especially good at reading, she never stuttered or mumbled when Mrs. Bryant asked her to read aloud. She was good at art class and singing, and could count to veinte in Spanish when the other kids could only count to diez. She was good at talking to adults and looking them in the eye without blushing. Alander was good at small things, like buttering his toast and stacking the plates neatly when he unloaded the dishwasher for his mother. It was big things like talking to people that gave him trouble. That was why, the first time he saw Emmaline at the bus stop, even though he knew, he waited for her to say something first. She was busy watching the clouds though, and it took four days for her to notice the quiet boy at the bus stop with her. He got tired of waiting, of knowing and not being able to say a thing. He coughed, she didn’t hear. He sneezed. He sneezed louder. “AAAAACHOOOOOOOOO!” She turned around, and as soon as she saw him, she knew, too. |