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Cleopatra's Magick and MoreEverything Abandoned Must Go On
You cannot hear or see dancers on plush carpets. The katydids will cover the walls with grand pliés-- I like remembering wolverines sprawled in bathtubs, large branches spying like the Queen of Wands. It won’t matter if you leave the faucets on. One day they may resume their can-can pragmatism and douse the curtains in hibiscus liquid. These rooms trace a cross on their foreheads. A mattress curls and sucks its thumb. Let the chandeliers salt the floorboards-- These are our last rites. The Breadcrumbs widget will appear here on the published site.
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Dreams of a Statue BoyBy Abdur-Rehman Qadeer QuailBellMagazine.com On a trip, to a museum I was.
There a statue, made of grey stone I saw. Statue of a little boy. The Breadcrumbs widget will appear here on the published site.
Seeing ThingsBy Gareth Culshaw QuailBellMagazine.com I went with him once, sitting
at the pond side. he loved the The Breadcrumbs widget will appear here on the published site.
The Queen and the HuntsmanWords by Bia Helvetti Illustrations by Sam Crow QuailBellMagazine.com *Editor's Note: Originally published in the charity anthology Gather Around the Flame. Many grandparents ago, before you or I or anyone we know was even thought of, there lived a king who was just about as kingly a king as anyone could wish for (and if you think that means he was kind and generous and noble and all the rest of it then you have a lot to learn, child).
This king then, he was arrogant, lazy, greedy and more in love with himself and his wine skin than with anyone else in the world, which was not so very fair on his wife now, you know? Ah, and it broke the young queen’s heart, so it did, for she was very much in love with him, as it goes, and in turn this small fact broke the heart of the king’s master huntsman, for he was head over his own heels in love with the queen and there now, you know, we have a nice lot of fish to put in our kettle and brew a good tale with, so I will delay no more and get about it. Now this king, after the fashion of those who came before him, he was fond of a good hunt (and all the good wine that went along with it, you know?) and ever and over again, when his court was growing dull (and that was about every Wednesday, you know, for courts are tedious places at the best of times) he would call upon his master huntsman to saddle up the horses and rally out the hounds and off he and his party would hie themselves across field and farm and forest on the tail of some poor quarry. I say ‘quarry’ like that for a purpose, child, for this wicked king and his wine-poached courtiers never minded whether they hunted man or beast and this also broke the poor huntsman’s heart for he was a far gentler and nobler sort of man than that, you know. The Breadcrumbs widget will appear here on the published site.
KnuckleheadBy Thomas McDade QuailBellMagazine.com I met Francy Owens through a Norfolk USO pen-pal program. Guys on the ship warned me that I was looking for trouble, but what the hell?
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A Baltimore Teacher Remembers Freddie GrayBy Sharon Frye QuailBellMagazine.com She watches fan blades strobe
a petal pattern, faint street lights flicker daisies, a cricket in her closet chirps behind a box of shoes The Breadcrumbs widget will appear here on the published site.
(For Orlando) MarthaBy Sharon Frye QuailBellMagazine.com You can’t tell if she’s gay
or straight- she flaunts a cosmic bulletin board hung in the Universe and all it says is LOVE-- The Breadcrumbs widget will appear here on the published site.
To Orlando and BeyondBy Peter K. Eriksson QuailBellMagazine.com Just Out of Range
All in the rhythm of a normal night the banging speakers dropped the beats that pulsed life through warm, muscled flesh. Our long arms outstretched in poses and poetry and longing twirling, twinning strands of DNA, agape and eros spinning, and more and more and more, spread your love more, because Why not love more? The lights sang searing tones that rainbow-strobed across the refreshing pool of shirtless chests bared and baring so much. The latest diva always has your back. When it all came down all those men and all those women, would never let me take it alone. Alone, there I would never be alone, not as the one who had dwelled drunken alone in the corner, drunker and drunker into a selfless pit so dark he would never, never see himself again. That night he returned at closing time and began to blacken the room to pitch all into his emptiness, his one vanishing point, darkness as his clack clack clack deafened the club’s rhythm draining one beat at a time. Then came mine, and I, like a white mist, coiled my insides out from the rising white wisps, and spirited from myself and left them all behind, each to their own end, to freedom from the soft dust that settled us after the bullets shattered bones and bricks completing their commandments. It was there, behind the dumpster with red-white-blue police lights trilling, out of range, where I knew we would arise springing from all ancestries’ strands that demand more love, more love more love, more love no matter the fire and the rubble. I just had to believe it. The Breadcrumbs widget will appear here on the published site.
Death of a DesireBy Hardeep Sabharwal QuailBellMagazine.com Once upon a time in India, there lived a Swan Princess with her husband Lion in a big castle.
When she came to his house after their marriage, the people from nearby villages came to know Lion’s wife was as beautiful as fairies, as pious as angles and her voice as sweet as music from heaven itself. So people from all over the area came to see her, but the front doors of her castle were always closed. Some tried to listen to her voice and put their ears on the wall of her house but to no success. The housekeeper of the house, Vixen, who was Lion’s aunt, did not allow anyone to see the charm of Swan Princess. |