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For LennyBy Kenneth Pobo QuailBellMagazine.com life was one big
cracked plate. How to eat off that? The Breadcrumbs widget will appear here on the published site.
Difference in Degree, not KindBy M. A. Istavan Jr. QuailBellMagazine.com When someone is in the next stall
having me all retentive (a reaction exacerbated if my shits are fiery), sometimes it suffices for me to do what I would be too ashamed to do in front of a stranger. Like what? The Breadcrumbs widget will appear here on the published site.
A Natural Love AffairBy Emily Corwin QuailBellMagazine.com smolder
ever I felt things in these rooms—a handful of tinder sticks, listen for sputter. becoming milkweed, becoming a wick gone crispy, a bride come back to the party and all the guests are elsewhere. I miss everybody, but leave me alone for goodness sake, why don’t you, don’t you go tumbling in the lake rust-- decay is what you’re smelling, a sunken dress—bleached, open husk, arms raised in shimmer. The Breadcrumbs widget will appear here on the published site.
ButterfliesBy Lynn White QuailBellMagazine.com *Editor's Note: First published in the Ealian, Karma issue, December 2015. So many new warriors
grown from the seeds planted by the invaders sent by the money men, the arms traders, the super ego-ed politicians. The Breadcrumbs widget will appear here on the published site.
Poems: A Tale of Round RotisBy Prerna Bakshi QuailBellMagazine.com *Editor's Note: These poems have been previously published: A Tale of Round Rotis (Indiana Voice Journal); Family gup-shup (Chit chat) (Indiana Voice Journal); Forgotten (Wilderness House Literary Review); Suitcase (Indiana Voice Journal); Sexism doesn’t exist (The Harpoon Review); "That's so like a girl!" (Anti-Serious). A Tale of Round Rotis
Ever Since I was growing up I was told just how important it was to cook round rotis. Perfectly shaped soft, round rotis. I hated them for their supposed 'perfectness', in a world full of people far from perfect who would judge a woman's worth by her ability to make 'round rotis'. The Breadcrumbs widget will appear here on the published site.
Saturday NightSaturday Night
We are watching someone pretending to die on TV, once again your arm around my waist, hands beneath the blankets as if seeing someone being repeatedly jabbed with an icepick was the most romantic of events, of settings, a natural prelude to mashing body parts together and staggering into bed. I lean into your shoulder wait for that first, perfect kiss I know is coming, pray that that stupid commercial with the hamster chanting Buddhist mantras is about to come on, something, anything to disrupt the uncomfortable feeling that I am getting turned on by watching someone get jabbed in the eye with an icepick, and I’m too busy groping and fumbling to truly care. Somewhere there are rats crammed into shoeboxes wires strung into their perforated skulls, diodes set into their flesh and they are real, they are not acting out their horrible, lingering deaths. In the bathroom, jamming my diaphragm into place I recite Buddhist mantras for those rats, the ones the hamster taught me think about those rats in the shoeboxes, what they’d think about my impassive viewing of a stranger getting stabbed over and over again with an icepick wonder if they could distinguish between the special effects needed to make the scene work, or the actual criminal, torturous act, I wonder if I can tell the difference, what I should do. The Breadcrumbs widget will appear here on the published site.
Poem: The Cursed Phoenix
By Kavya Chandra
QuailBellMagazine.com
Clear waters erupt simultaneously with the
wind, as if they weren't made to compliment each other's rhetorical gasps of whichever element would fit them best, and a man about as aged as the Earth itself is seated by the shore of this claimed, unnamed land; his feet end where another place altogether starts- the place where the consuming creatures of the Earth lie, breathe, become; he sits vacantly as his arms beg to shiver in the pale moonlight; his ears twitch as the crashing and thrashing of persuasive waves erode his mind constantly asking him to not think, not believe, not contemplate if he would, if he could slip into the grasp of morbid mortality, and he calms them with utmost patience, like you calm yourself over running away from the only life that comforts you- you aren't going to let it run around like a deer caught in the eyes of her predator, but the thought of it seems exciting, worthwhile, even but then you must let it go, you've survived, the predator wasn't hungry enough; the man's arms are shaking now and the air around him seems perplexed, consternated, unconvinced, he has been here enough times, he has become a man tiresome enough for his age enough times, now they mustn't worry, he tells them, he is tired, indeed, but he is also remarkably misunderstood to be assumed to run wild around like the species who think they're saving themselves for a greater day; he swings the fronts of his orangish feet back and forth, back and forth, back and forth, to match the incoming and receding waves; it is time to leave now, it is time to put on his dark "materials," as they call it; he slowly makes his aura slander his body straight, he opens his arms to a full 180 degrees, his featureless, senseless face protrudes a peacock like beak, turns into a blinding white on all visible surfaces, like the rest of his blinding body, it doesn't hurt- only after every 1400 years or so perhaps, has it felt a sense of some degenerate feeling, it has eyes, now, a sapphire blue to match the morning skies; the dawn must break as soon as it flies, its rainbow legs ache as they pull muscles for the journey ahead, it blinks and the air follows it, then the first sun ray, then the ringing silence of the crashing waves; long survived, long lost, long forgotten- it's a myth; the phoenix knows though all men must die, none quite believably have to live.
#UnReal #Poem #Poetry #Earth #Waves #Phoenix #Curse #Curses #Rising #Falling
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Paris, The Summer of '68
By Gary Beck
QuailBellMagazine.com
When Roy Cafferty got to Paris for the last part of his European trip, he needed an inexpensive room. He walked the streets, stopping and inquiring at small hotels and pensiones, but they all cost more than he could afford. People looked at the tall, blond haired young man, dressed in a rumpled, baggy old green corduroy suit, but he didn’t notice the attention. Tired and hungry, he stopped at a seedy outdoor café and ordered the cheapest item on the menu, a ham sandwich and café au lait. The waiter, who looked like an ancient gray parrot, was a dirty old man candidate, leering at the passing women and making salacious comments, which were contemptuously ignored. Several street wise women gave back better than they got. One woman made an obscene gesture with her hand and yelled: “Ride this, Henri, you sewer mouth.” He thrust his index finger at her and they both cackled. Roy grinned at the spirited exchange and asked the waiter if he could recommend a cheap hotel. He thought for a moment and named two.
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Poetry: Keystone & Captive
By Haley Zilberberg
QuailBellMagazine.com
Keystone
We keep canaries in our bedroom because we are scared. The Breadcrumbs widget will appear here on the published site.
Gaza 20th July 2014By Lynn White QuailBelllMagazine.com Thirteen soldiers died today.
Soldiers. Soldiers not people. People could not do it. Could not do the things they did. The thirteen dead and the rest who live. Soldiers. Things in uniform obeying orders, yes sir no sir-ing their way into oblivion. They could do it. They would do anything, if told to. |