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One Dead, Many Living
No question, seeing a man die
has stayed with me. I've watched them walk, heard them talk, but the repetition bored me. They were nothing until the car skidded, smashed into a pole, the driver's door flung open, and a bloody mass of human being slumped half out into the road, Man came into his own that day. No more the blank guy in the dark suit, the invisible shopkeeper who sold me candy. A million of them could have pounded sidewalks, rode the bus, drove, caught cabs, coughed or spat or held their tongue, and I've had been none the wiser. But one man panicked, slammed his brakes, sacrificed himself so all these others could be known. The battered, shattered crimson face was the first of many faces.
#Unreal #LifeAndDeath #Sacrifice #Tragic #CarAccident #Poetry
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From the Ashes
By Naomi Yung
QuailBellMagazine.com
My mother always said I was born of fire.
For this reason she named me Phoenix, and at the earliest age she could, she dyed my hair the color of flames. My mother was always paranoid. The Breadcrumbs widget will appear here on the published site.
Elizabeth's Cat
By Julian Drury
QuailBellMagazine.com
It is impossible for me the restate all these issues, as I have already borne torture and confession. Murderer they have called me! Fools they are. They will see. I am still alive, and they can’t destroy me. I will tell you, though, the story about my predicament. How, you may ask? The reason I am where I am. I am a truthful person, and rather attentive to feeling. I am not as great a monster as those pious fools say I am. In fact, I am caring, gentle to the body and soul. Though, it was when the great omen beset me, in shape of a black cat that I fell from my graces. Here I sit, imprisoned in my own castle. Neither God nor Satan wants my company. I still live.
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Thomas James 1: The Confrontation*Editor's Note: This is part 1 of a series of fiction we at Quail Bell are pleased to present to you. Keep an eye out in the upcoming weeks for the next chapters!
As he approached his nemesis waiting for him on the sandy shore, Thomas James pondered what to say to him. All he could do was look straight into his eyes as he felt the moist sand crushed between his own toes with every step he took. His enemy, Milton Kinkade, stood before him with crossed arms, pondering his every move, trying to decide whether to beat Thomas or allow him to explain himself.
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Twenty Signs
Words & Image by Rony Nair
QuailBellMagazine.com
"You swirl and take the strait past
You swing those hips of yours Your eyes they hardly break a glimpse As you kiss with all you’ve got. You turn around to go one away Your hands they’re still on mine Your eyes look away with that glazed holdout Your hands are still on mine. You tell me never to go away You tell me never to stop There never was a shard before But now there’s this, in a single drop. You lie down, resting your head on me. You look, and then break down. You hold me with all you've got And then you send me on my way saying… “Twenty signs It’s time to move on….”
#Unreal #Poetry #Photography #Relationships #Unrequited #Love
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Nothing Can Hurt Me Now
They called me the Austrian woman, because it sounded like the ostrich bitch, L’autruche chienne. The French love their puns. But puns are not facts. They merely seem so when they are spouted from the puckered lips of court ladies, or enlivened by the engraver’s arts. Twenty years of libelles, illustrating me with the distinct anatomy of the ostrich, rutting like a bitch dog in heat, with the portly figure of the King, My husband, wearing his cuckold horns, produced a rather unsavory family portrait.
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Oliver
By Isabella Ronchetti
QuaiBellMagazine.com *Editor's Note: We are delighted to have the work of 13 year-old (yes, 13 !) Isabella Ronchetti, an artist, writer, and maker-of-things. Her artwork and creative writing has been published in Stone Soup, Celebrating Art, Skipping Stones, Creative Kids, The Claremont Review, and Poetic Power. More of her work can be found at IsabellaRonchetti.com.
#Unreal #VisualArt #Oliver #Colors #Flight #TeenTalent #Bird #WindupToy #Cartoon #Humor #Steampunk
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Wild Flower
Della Mae grunted as she dug around the flower bed next to her grandfather’s woodshed. It was hot out, and droplets of sweat beaded on her forehead and rolled down her round brown cheeks and dropped into the crackling dirt beneath her. Every once in a while she wriggled to stand up, wobbled around the corner of the woodshed to see if her grandfather was coming from the neighbor’s, then toddled back to her minefield of holes. She did not dig very methodically. Some holes only spanned three inches wide and as many inches deep. Others were gaping holes dug as deep as her little arm could reach down. She used her hands and a small trowel she took from the woodshed. She did not know what she was digging for, but she did not stop.
Her grandfather Eddie had planted the flower bed for his late wife Marylove the previous October. It had been warm then, too. It was 1976. Della Mae had helped her papa in the planting as much as a four-year-old field hand could, and it entertained him well enough to watch her flinging the fresh-turned dirt and patting the hand spade on the moist earth. He smiled at her, though he could only think of his wife then, and how he had let her go. The Breadcrumbs widget will appear here on the published site.
CamelotPretty little peacocks watching beautiful lies, displayed as fantasies on their feather’s eyes. The Breadcrumbs widget will appear here on the published site.
Me, The (American) Far Field
Words by Gretchen Gales
Image by Claire Lefew QuailBellMagazine.com *Author's Note: After Theodore Roethke's "The Far Field". In the pit-stop of memory missed by most the family, Where patchwork of inverted crimson triangles, Haunt with the stamp, resting place of ‘P’ for Pollack, Not far away from the would-be charcoal-dump Among the tangle of Scot-Irish twine, Slavic-sewn, broken border-- I received my American wardrobe.
#Unreal #4thOfJuly #American #Heritage #Immigration #WhatAreTheOdds?
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