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CosmonautBy Paul Kang QuailBellMagazine.com Paul Kang was born in South Korea, raised in Portugal, and studied Communication Arts at VCUarts in Richmond, Virginia. He graduated this year. Now he resides in the city's Fan district and makes art whenever he can.
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Hot GirlsBy Amy Outland QuailBellMagazine.com i don’t consider myself a lesbian. i notice cute boys on occasion. if one approached me, i wouldn’t say no but is it a crime to notice hot girls too? blame Hollywood & rock music. without them i never would have discovered anna paquin looks better blonde or that anne hathaway looked hot in Rachel Getting Married. playing a hot mess of a recovering drug addict. speaking of rachels, evan rachel wood would fit into the category of hot girls too. rock music gives us fiery vixens. amy lee gets my attention not just because she shares my name shirley manson gets a nod, for more than just her fierce red hair. what she said about cherry lips & androgyny (too bad she shares the surname of a serial killer) gets me thinking about kissing girls just like the jill sobule song. i rock a natalie portman hairstyle & love rufus wainwright & melissa etheridge i wear jeans & listen to indigo girls shame on you if you think less of me don’t be surprised if ani difranco comes out of her little plastic castle to give you a piece of her mind i love Queer as Folk too thanks in equal measure to thea gill, gale harold & a close friend who is destined to be nicknamed brian forever. not sure if this means i’m gay but either way i’m proud to be myself. Amy Beth Outland is a freelance social media and creative writer with a B.A. in English and Type: 09 teaching certification from Illinois State University. She has worked as a freelance social media writer for Gather.com since 2010. She has also worked as an Eng: 101 undergraduate teaching assistant while attending Illinois State University. When Amy isn’t working as a tutor or as a Guest Relations Representative at Franciscan St. James Health in Olympia Fields, Illinois, she is at work on the completion of her first novel. Amy has also had poems published in the Chicago based fine arts journal Exact Change Only in both 2010 and 2012.
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Adrift Daydreams Upon the Banks of the Nile an average of 2,830 cubic meters per second of rich silt forms an alluvial plain that spreads outward in a fan shape from sedimentary deposit whereby ancient Egyptian civilizations got built adorning arid topography invaluable like the aorta pumping blood at the nape of the neck, yet in this analogous context engendered engineering feats without guilt whereby artisans, craftsmen, early geographers illustrated in frieze and drape frozen timeless statuary exhibiting the phenomenal abilities to the hilt associated from mainspring within the fertile crescent swollen like a plump grape which longest river often overflows the banks whereby coveted materiel gets spilt feeding the rift valley and allowing, enabling and providing peoples to dominate flooding the history of mankind with accomplishments that marvel even today epitomized by innovations - alphabets, wheelwrights, pyramids, etc lives did create baffling historians how each block of edifices these persons did intricately lay perfect with near geometric exactitude that rank as wonders of the world great faint hints of daily trials and tribulations recorded for posterity in clay or shards of broken pottery pieced together coupling revelations a mosaic plate which functional artifacts provided dietary staples from god’s populace did pray. The Breadcrumbs widget will appear here on the published site.
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Through Candid EyesBy Jeff Wimperis QuailBellMagazine.com I shiver under a midsummer sun in the tall grass we once played in as children. You lie at my side with a cold stare toward the sky. The reflection of my plain face and flat hair shimmers in the corner of your eye, but you’re too distant. These times of toil preoccupy your mind: the times I’m overlooked. So long it took you to notice me in the first place. Growing up, always there, then finally you love me. The hard manner and long scar lining your beautiful face remind me you’ve had a hard young life. The scar I tended with the white of my blood stained shirt when I was only your friend. I feel your love in the way you understand it, but I don’t recognize you acknowledge what you feel. Strong silent type, what is it you see? I roll over, dismissing the thought because of my tendency to overthink. The rich blue of the sky exhales its gentle breeze and rests my eyes. A rustle to my right startles me and I see Tristan on his feet. “Tris,’” I call to him. He continues walking away. I blink, and he is 10 paces further. “Tristan!” I shout. Again, he takes no heed. Proceeding into the trees bordering the field, he disappears. I chase after him and enter at the same spot, yet the trees I’ve known so many years seem oddly unfamiliar. “Tristan, wait!” The lush of summer chestnut grows thinner with each step. His broad form fades further on and passes out of sight. "Wait!” The air dries, and my lungs burn to the chill passing through my nostrils. I emerge on the opposite side to a city miles away. A curtain of snowflakes drapes the scene, temporarily obscuring my vision. Waving them aside I spot Tristan approaching a pedestrian bridge ahead. His walk is stiff and overly balanced. I run to catch him through the cutting air, wrapping my arms around my elbows to preserve whatever warmth my T-shirt was unprepared to hold. Reaching him, I take his hand. It’s frigid. He slowly rotates his head to acknowledge my presence but his pupils register nothing familiar. The Breadcrumbs widget will appear here on the published site.
Through the Running TrainEarly afternoon embraced A moorish tract of farmland green– Narrow paths ran through the grass, Tall hairs of shrubs, once jade had been How white were the grey ticket houses, The train quaked into running strides– Houses failed to race it through And plunge into countryside tides The eye of daylight arced the sky And settled on my right hand’s palm– As scraps of withering brick-built huts Eyes its journey to sleep, with calm– Their eyes shone with a marigold hue; The sky borrowed the fleeting shade– White water-birds, much whiter than Truth, innocence and childhood, played With a womanly grace of wings, As blacker birds were drawn to them, Both once made one, by twilight’s mood– The eye of daylight was a red gem Oh, as the manmade hours tolled, The empress strength and beauty ceased, So thoroughly, that ash clouds could, With their Autumnal force released, Wrap satin cloths of grey around The vulnerable, ruby face– Such that, it took less time to drown, To make a pathway, as did pace My lover, my dream, my poetry – They named it lovely Early Evening – Smoke-blue, topped with blushing red, With golden remnants; haunted singing Madhura Banerjee is seventeen years old, and a school student, from West Bengal, India. In her pre-teens and early teens, her poems have been published in the extras of The Telegraph, namely "Telekids" and "The Telegraph in Schools." Her short story had been short-listed in the Top Twenty-Five of the All-India Scholastic Writing Awards of 2006. Her work has been published in the online magazine, Teen Ink.
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Richmond SoulsRain gifts the benighted city with a million mirror-fragment momentary diamonds, turning concrete and homeless-huddle tarps and my old leather jacket to things of vanishing sylvan beauty, like the faces I glimpsed as a child in the last of the ancient New England woods, Sidhe ladies dancing in the corner of the eye until too-adult, world-stained hands sweep raindrops from my jacket, shattering a thousand worlds like the glass of empty windows I wander past. I remember that eyes belong to the soul and shiver as I sense upon me the gaze of house after factory after inscrutable tower, doll-glass eyes shattered in for unknowable purpose, myths rising out of the rain. Nicholas Shipman is a poet originally from Boston who now resides in Richmond, Virginia. The Breadcrumbs widget will appear here on the published site.
CupcakesBy Beth J. Whiting QuailBellMagazine.com Maria didn’t have any friends. The only joy she had in her life was cupcakes. She made them with her mother every night. When they went to the grocery store every week, it was a wonder. Her mother let her decide the frostings and the batter. Sometimes she did funky combinations like coconut frosting with butter pecan batter. Maria could and would do anything to experiment with her cupcakes. Her mother packed four cupcakes for her every day when she went to school. One day Maria was sitting alone at lunch when a skinny boy named Ian asked her for a cupcake. This was a huge problem. How could she give up a cupcake? Yet something told her to comply. So she gave a cupcake to him. Then Ian asked Maria something strange, “Do you like bugs?” “No.” “I think they are the most wonderful thing in the world, Maria. People dismiss them as ugly but they are fascinating creatures.” He invited her to his house, the first time someone at school ever had invited Maria anywhere. She could not say no. Maria let her mother know before she went. Ian's house was a normal suburban home with a green lawn. It didn’t prepare her for his room, which was full of bugs in cages. “Here are my bugs. You know, I’ve surrounded myself with them so much that I now know their language.” Yeah, right, she thought. Then Maria heard Ian speak in a foreign tongue. He pointed to his ant farm. “They’re tired all of the time. They rarely complain. Grasshoppers cry all the time. That’s what they do when they sing. They’re very romantic creatures.” |