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Mr. Bluesman
-Mississippi, 1937
Every Saturday Ida listened to Charley Dixon play the blues. Ida was up front at the Lone Star juke joint drinking three fingers of bourbon in one hand with a dollar in the other. Charley was a female guitarist disguised as a man with a male alias. She was a traveling musician whose purpose was to seduce women. The Breadcrumbs widget will appear here on the published site.
Don't Talk About Fight Club (but poems...)Revolutions in our midst: Durden blessed as Durden kissed escapades from the edge. Whilst moved by Rally’s Chopper Wielding club. Wielding gown. Wielding pink to unite waggish crowds. A hit. A break. The clarity of glass shattered Indiscriminate balls smacked deep Into culture. Into mist. Paper Street philosophy, laughter, and a kiss from Durden’s bliss to fight sorrow’s apathy. A fight for instinct. A fight for life, a fight to be who we are today. Without boundaries, inhibitions, cages, or plights. Durden’s cultured hug. Durden’s cultured kiss. Amused our mind by bullet, by gun, by cheek, and by tongue. Now what the fucks that other guy’s name? Tyler’s alter ego . . . Something, something, clown.
#Unreal #Poetry #Ekphrastic #FightClub #Beast #Individuality #Freedom #Society
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Photo Essay: The Truth Belongs To You And Me!
Rony Nair works as an oil and gas Risk Management consultant. He’s been 20 years in the industry since starting off as an Industrial engineer a long time ago. Extensively traveled. Dangers fronted often. But that’s his day job. The one that pays for bread and bills.
He’s been a worshipper at the altar of prose and poetry for almost as long as he could think. They have been the shadows of his life. (They’ve been) the bedsit at the end of a long day; the repository that does the sound of silence inimitably well. Not unlike a pet; but with one core difference- the books do suggest, educate and weave a texture that marginally provides streams of thought that are new. And one of the biggest pleasures of his life, is certainly holding a treasured edition in one’s hands. Physically. Rony’s been writing poetry since 1985 and was a published columnist with the Indian Express in the early 1990’s. He is also a professional photographer about to hold his first major exhibition and has previously been published by New Asian Writing (NAW), Semaphore, The Cadet, The Economic Times and YES magazine. Rony has been profiled by the Economic Times of Delhi. He cites V.S Naipaul, A.J Cronin, Patrick Hamilton, Alan Sillitoe, John Braine and Nevil Shute in addition to FS Fitzgerald as influences on his life; and Philip Larkin, Dom Moraes and Ted Hughes as his personal poetry idols. Larkin’s’ collected poems would be the one book he would like to die with. When the poems perish. As do the thoughts!
#Unreal #Photography #PhotoEssay #FeaturedArtist #Nature #Travel #Inspiration #Muse
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The Ride HomeIf not for being more depressed than usual Everett Trill would not have been caught dead drinking down at the bar of the chain restaurant, but he had felt so lonely that he figured he could pass the evening with a few beers, and while he was at it maybe sketch a few faces into his notepad. Though Everett was a talented artist the notepad that he always carried around with him also served as a means of communicating with others, for he was born not only talented, but deaf-mute as well. When he’d first arrived at the restaurant, and the waitress swayed up to him with a smile, he’d written on a clean white page, very clear and large: BEER, PLEASE. Though taken aback, the squinting waitress quickly recovered with a smile, and said, “Oh, I see. Sure thing, darlin.” A moment later she’d delivered his glass of beer, receiving payment and a second note that read, THANK YOU, along with a kind smile from Everett’s soundless lips, as he laid two dollars-tip on the bar. The Breadcrumbs widget will appear here on the published site.
A Little Accident
I sat down on a chair in front of my boss’s desk. There was just something about what Mr. Stevenson said that hadn’t sunk in yet.
Fired. It was the one word an employee never wanted to hear. Unfortunately, I was one of those employees because it was something that actually happened and wasn’t in my head. It couldn’t have been a worse time to be unemployed since the country was in the middle of an economic recession. The Breadcrumbs widget will appear here on the published site.
Mythology
Musing on mortality renders us
immortal. A silver squeeze ripples through the woven circle; who knows whose hand started it? Grapes unstomped but we’re intoxicated by the storytelling, creased in toga folds, ripe with archetypes billowing like sails.
#Unreal #Mythology #Mortality #GreekGods #RomanGods #AncientHistory #Poetry #WordsAndPictures #Philosophy
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Huckle's Tale
By Julian Drury
QuailBellMagazine.com Author's Note: This story is a retelling of a Southern folktale commonly known as "Tail-y-po."
There was the woodsman named Huckle, who was out on one of his usual hunts with his two bloodhounds, Adam and Eve. Huckle had been hard-pressed lately to scrape up a decent meal, as something had been causing the decline of the animal population of the woods. No dove, or deer, rabbit or even the faintest squirrel. It’s as if all of the animals simply vanished, like an old omen of yesteryear. Huckle and his dogs were determined to track a decent meal. It took many hours of patience and searching, yet finally Huckle managed to glance something in his rifle scope. Between the high branches of the rustic leaved tree, a sight, a black spot, came in view. He had no idea what he was looking at through his scope, but it was definitely an animal of some kind.
Or, was it? Clearly this creature, thing, was an “it,” not a “he” or “she.” Huckle had never seen a creature like it before. His dogs had never smelled such a creature before, causing their hair to rise up from their spines as they growled heavily. This was not a friendly beast. Huckle quietly observed this creature from his scope, gathering in every one of its bizarre features. The creature looked somewhat like an ape or monkey, with dark-black fur. It sat on a tree branch many yards ahead of Huckle and his dogs, hiding themselves in the brush. It had human/ape like hands to eat, holding what seemed to be some item of food. With its jagged teeth, this beast chomped onto the food item in its hand. Its eyes were of savage, yellow fire, and its face resembled the faces of the the beasts in the children’s book, Where the Wild Things Are. This creature also held a long tail, incredibly long, even for any type of monkey. From the distance Huckle lay, he concluded the tail on the creature alone had to be at least eight feet. The Breadcrumbs widget will appear here on the published site.
The Absence
By Adreyo Sen
QuailBellMagazine.com
When she was five, she was a brave little boy, addicted to G.I. Joe, who dreamt of earning her father’s gratitude by saving him from terrorists. She was in love with her pretty English teacher.
When she was twelve, still unable to tie her own shoelaces, she was no longer sure if she was a boy or a girl. She knew God had given her a tremendous gift for words; she wrote poems that spoke of a terrible love she had yet to experience. When she was eighteen, she thought she was Sydney Carton from A Tale of Two Cities, and sought to change the world with her self-effacing dedication. At times, however, she wished she was Lucie Manette, a golden thread linking together all the boys she’d come to love in her six years at boarding school. In college, she was in love with a tall woman who brought fire into her mute existence. But the woman didn’t love her and laughed at her stuttering proclamations of eternal devotion. When she was twenty-four and ready to fall in love with the madness that would leave her a bitter yet gentle shell, constantly suspecting that the world scorned her, she compulsively sought company, seeking to escape the sickness she felt when she was alone. Her best friend was a bearded PhD student she longed to wrap herself around. “We have coffee all the time,” he said to her one day, “And I still don’t know who you are.” And she wondered if she was an absence, a meek hello at the edge of a forever stranger’s vision, before sadly limping away.
#TheUnreal #Absence #She #He #Transgender #ComingOfAge #AltLit #Identity #Love
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The Last Wolf of Scotland
By Steven Joseph McCrystal
QuailBellMagazine.com
Blood, blood; I want blood. I must run
My heart bursts with pain when I see my destination Blood, blood; I want blood. I must run My heart beats faster My pulse quickens to a sprint The bonnie heather parts with the wake from my legs For an instant I am free from the chase Free from everything Free Until the sting bites I have him. He’s mine. I killed: The Last Wolf of Scotland A tale to tell my children at dusk.
#Unreal #TheLastWolfOfScotland #Freedom #Poem #Poetry
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Graduating to what?
By Nick Mancuso
QuailBellMagazine.com
The hour after commencement, Max was uneasy about the quiet on campus. Not long after the caravan of families drove away from the flapping white tent, the quad felt like a long abandoned battlefield. The shells of the destroyed city remained, but the people were long gone. A low breeze blew through the detritus of streamers and glitter in the parking lot.
The ceremony affected Max more than he’d like to admit. Even still, a little drunk and a little groggy, he knew. Crossing the stage, shaking the Provost’s hand was, to use a cliché from the very commencement address he had just sat through; “the ending of one chapter, and the opening of the next.” But what was that next chapter? Most of his friends enrolled in complicated internships in Boston and New York, or traveled abroad for service learning projects, or to graduate school. Max felt he was different. He was heading home, back to Massachusetts, to, for the first time in his life, the unknown. Embracing this foreign world in the confines of his childhood bedroom was foreign to him, the known truly becoming the unknown. |