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The Lies We Tell To Lighten The TruthThe world rattles, strikes a chord that tightens the lines of our nerves, and all the injustice that pours like a flood through the news is felt in the ache of the lower back, the hip, the neck-- The Breadcrumbs widget will appear here on the published site.
planet gazing for feelings, i.e. how did i get hereBy jacklyn janeksela QuailBellMagazine.com i was feeling some kinda way then it didn’t matter because you didn’t matter because your body is a matter i can’t seem to get my hands around & then you sort of float away like one of those childhood balloons from my childhood, the one i let go nodding into an applauding sky, a penned message: hello, i’m jacklyn, here’s where i live, please write me The Breadcrumbs widget will appear here on the published site.
Zoo EyesSince I was a child, my dad never liked the way I looked at him. He would take me to Audubon Zoo when he was able, and commented that I had “eyes like a zoo animal.” I loved the zoo as a child, while my dad wasn’t as enthusiastic yet took me anyway because he knew I enjoyed it. Because of my natural affinity with the animals, my dad claimed that I had the same look in my eyes. Since childhood, my dad referred to me as “Zoo Eyes”, and I warmed to that name. My dad died two days after my twentieth birthday. Cirrhosis of the liver. That was the last time anyone called me Zoo Eyes. I still called myself that, however. No one understood the reason I called myself Zoo Eyes, and I never bothered to explain it properly. Perhaps I was like the animals, in that way. Predators and prey never have names. The Breadcrumbs widget will appear here on the published site.
Beckett's Left EyeBy Ricky Ray QuailBellMagazine.com An iris, I rise. I want roots like a banyan, half-earth, half-air, all the water a word can sip. Leaf toxins poisonous to any would-land bird. Humming and I get along just fine. They come, hover enough to say hello, then keep it moving. An empty house these vowel-heavy boughs and hollows. The Breadcrumbs widget will appear here on the published site.
A Thousand Palms A DayBy Ricky Ray QuailBellMagazine.com
At the ticket window, a man who could be an elderly woman, her face so tired it falls asleep without her, takes your palm instead of your money, cuts it open with a knife that doesn't hurt, and with a knowing twitch of her 'stache reads the code in your blood, really a story in a story, a furred creature running across the page The Breadcrumbs widget will appear here on the published site.
PhaethonWords by George Salis Image by Gretchen Gales @GGalesQuailBell QuailBellMagazine.com *Editor's Note: This was initially published in Indie Soliel Magazine .
His father didn’t fall asleep, but simply fell from the sky, right foot over left foot, arms outstretched with palms exposed, head touching his shoulder. He opened his eyes and saw the world inverted. If anything, he was a light beam, photon-struck and magnet-pulled. Perhaps possessing a wave function, perhaps not. But really, he was human, a truth hard to remember twenty thousand feet above the earth. Up here, everything was covered in an orange haze, as though he was re-entering the atmosphere. The world burning. Up here, while his skin heated to extreme temperatures, his entire body scintillated. He didn’t fall asleep, even though this, his last skydive, would be remembered as a secret metamorphosis. Up here, he was the Atom among atoms. When you see how the universe is constructed, you can cease fighting it. But he now knew how futile such a notion was as he passed through them, their structure compromised. Protons, neutrons, and electrons scattering. He tried to mold his being to this broken layer of existence, but he could not. As sparks radiated from his body in spirals, he was both solar entity and subatomic particle. The hydrogen and helium of his eyes, held together by their own gravity, churned with nuclear fusion. His legs and arms, his heart and brain, all these would break into clumps of matter and be swept up by his eyes as fuel. The left eye blue-shifted, the right red-shifted. This time it wasn’t safe to say that he didn’t fall asleep, not necessarily, because what happened or didn’t happen next might have been simultaneously something and nothing, yet wholly different than anything he had experienced: He blacked out, hidden within the clouds, as his own sun…. The Breadcrumbs widget will appear here on the published site.
The Yorkshire ManBy Cohl Warren-Howles QuailBellMagazine.com Everyone looks forward to making memories together
come rain, come shine, whatever the weather, but sometimes, it doesn’t work out as we’ve planned and the cards we’ve been dealt, are not the hand we’ve assumed the path, our lives will take and all our ideas, we may have to forsake. The Breadcrumbs widget will appear here on the published site.
Mary Cassatt's PicturesMary Cassatt's pictures are shadows cast by my son's mother her mother my mother praise God for all the mothers good at one handed chores The Breadcrumbs widget will appear here on the published site.
American GreetingsA letter arrives from the tropics
dripping seeking answers. “Kimonos?” The Breadcrumbs widget will appear here on the published site.
El LobizonLobizon, Lobizon, I hear your growl tangled within the vines,
Your skeletal-pale form trampling my hopes into fears, Because, it is true, I am the seventh son in line. |