The Breadcrumbs widget will appear here on the published site.
Jeanne Marie
By Jeanne Joe Perrone
QuailBellMagazine.com *Editor's Note: Previously published in Aphros Literary Magazine
In high school when I’d wake up I’d find my mother ironing
Her scrubs of gruesome bright colors first thing in the kitchen. Her Favorites were gross greens, querulous purples, sinister sunflower Prints. Less outlandish only are her reading-glasses-chains. She doesn’t eat breakfast, but drinks Earl Grey tea in a travel mug. In black and white snapshots from the 60s she looks like Audrey Hepburn to me, all angles and beauty, brown eyes. She liked blues. As all Beautiful young girls are unhappy, so was she. She was a fifties child, sixties teen, seventies divorcee, eighties bus driver, Nineties x-ray guru, a millennium saint…she likes salad for lunch; Ice cream all other hours. Why is she so thin and tall? What is The secret of her cheekbones and shy, lipsticked grin? Bugs Bunny cartoons always made both of us laugh, but after Divorce numero dos she didn’t have time to watch. She’d play tapes Of herself reading anatomy books instead, or, in a frenzy to relax, Ride bicycles in the Back Bay. She made food stamps a game. Now the hard times are over. 3rd marriage, 2 houses, 2 grown kids, 1 great church, a snug career. She’s a Protestant now. Jesus is real to us; Jesus is all to us. Trader Joe’s food is in our pantry, Redwood needles on our road.
#UnReal #Poem #Poetry #Mothers #Portrait #Biographic #Decades #Divorce #BrokenHomes #Religion #Home #Relationships
Visit our shop and subscribe. Sponsor us. Submit and become a contributor. Like us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter.
The Breadcrumbs widget will appear here on the published site.
Zero
They make us
Consistently measure them out One by one (one, two, three…) The Breadcrumbs widget will appear here on the published site.
After the Wedding
By Allison Boyd
QuailBellMagazine.com
Believe me: life is in the right, always.
-Rainier Maria Rilke The war hero, father of the groom, hovers by his youngest grandchild, who is smiling incoherently, insistently, beside the vase-sheathed daffodils. The Breadcrumbs widget will appear here on the published site.
The Girl in BlueThe headstone stands outside the cluster of the cemetery, alone beneath a cedar tree. It declares, “Unknown but not forgotten.” It is a lie, though a gentle one, and Delilah is grateful for it. The Breadcrumbs widget will appear here on the published site.
Caveat Emptor Caveat Venditor
As warlocks go, Harald was a failure. Even though his curses were vigorously evil, and his pitches quite logical, he almost always lost the business. Harald partly blamed his sex: most Internet advertising for spells and curses came from witches. Those seeking vengeance or unfair advantage picked the repugnant hags rather than Harald, who was merely homely and middle-aged. Harald had given himself mental hernias trying to increase sales.
The Breadcrumbs widget will appear here on the published site.
My relationship with a corned beef sandwich
Thanks for the place. Came in most handy. We fed ducks
to the breadcrumbs and met a psychiatrist and his kid down by the pond. Seemed to know some of the same people, yet got it bit mixed-up with colleagues and patients and myself. The Breadcrumbs widget will appear here on the published site.
Like a Bubble
Inside the monstrous beat
I lure an ocean of silence, Unattached and pure; and At every turn of your take I heave mountain of vastness To plunge my breath to unfathomable deep The Breadcrumbs widget will appear here on the published site.
It took abandonment to defeat the lionIn mourning, the cure is the sickness—Traci Brimhall Beyond ease dropping there is little else to be done The Breadcrumbs widget will appear here on the published site.
Spending The Day With Someone Close
By Kiki Stamatiou
QuailBellMagazine.com
Having the rest of the day free due to a day off from work, Thomas James saw this as the perfect opportunity to spend the day with himself and with someone close to him. He took it upon himself to pick up flowers from one of the local flower shops in town to take to Weston Memorial Cemetery.
The Breadcrumbs widget will appear here on the published site.
The New It Girl
One morning she woke up a silent movie heroine. It wasn’t something that she had desired or even anticipated, but when she looked in the mirror there it was. She appeared, of course, in black and white, and the eyes that stared back at her were heavily rimmed with kohl. Her skin was thickly layered with pancake makeup and her once-long hair had been cropped into a severe Louise Brooks bob, two shades darker than her natural color. She thought the negligee that she didn’t remember buying was a little risqué for its time. Examining her reflection a few moments longer, she determined that she looked like a bit of a vamp, the sort of girl who was dead by the end of the picture. She was extraordinary and doomed.
|