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You Must Know
You look at me and don’t smile.
You must know I’m evil, I am not made of pure love for you, ambivalence is my middle name, or not. Or you don’t look at me as I sing made-up songs, and you must know my secrets. What if I am your enemy and I made you, like a vengeful god. What if the songs and the nicknames don’t matter, but you know me before the words come out, like when my body was your home, your unconscious, your heaven.
#Unreal #NotMadeOfLove #DoYouKnowMySecrets? #Vengeful #DoesItMatter?
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Softly Spoken
Your eyes are like the letters
of a language The Breadcrumbs widget will appear here on the published site.
How To Create a World
1.) Define a space or lack thereof.
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Invitations to the Affair
By Mark Brazaitis
QuailBellMagazine.com
They sat at a table in a corner of their favorite out-of-the-way coffee house to compose the guest list.
Their spouses would be invited, of course. So would his two boys (one in college, the other a high-school sophomore) and her ten-year-old daughter. His mother would be invited, although she probably wouldn’t come, as it might remind her of her husband, his father, who had had a trio of mistresses, one in each of the final three decades of his life. (He’d died, of a heart attack, in his last mistress’s bedroom as he buckled his belt and condemned a politician’s flight from decency.) She would invite both of her parents, who, she said, “will support me no matter what.” The Breadcrumbs widget will appear here on the published site.
Why Even Try?
By Joseph D. Reich
QuailBellMagazine.com
How to convince the wife when you tell her
you want to take her to Vegas and she says we’re not going to Vegas! And you tell her we’re going to Vegas! And she says I don’t want to go to Vegas! And you tell her we’re gonna’ go to Vegas! (Christ on a cracker!) Use the argument like when Ben Affleck and his wife got into a fight and flew off to Vegas and have we gotten to that point in our life and marriage when you surprise her on the spur of the moment and have to beg and convince her and give her demands and ultimatums and she says all this nonsense about renovating the bathroom or putting down floors or getting granite or buying her that diamond which got ripped-off and feel like you’re playing this constant existential game of catch-up not sure why and wasn’t the whole point to simply do something out of the ordinary and on the sly in taking her to sin city and never leave our rooms for the whole weekend like when Howard Hughes stricken with the Hamlet dilemma was all paranoid in the prime of his down slide as you hear your child like some wild angel sloshing in his bathtub in the back ground having the time of his life.
#Unreal #Arguments #Surprises #Marriage #NotSoSpurOfTheMoment
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Goodnight Stars
Words by Stella Padnos-Shea
Image by Shannon Chrisman QuailBellMagazine.com *Editor's Note: Italicized lines from Goodnight Moon by Margaret Wise Brown, 1947.
Goodnight stars goodnight air
I read to my baby on my lap and the words sound final, sound infinite, like the choice to jump, to fall from Earth. Was this what you thought—goodnight air, breath going stale, goodbye. You were closing, you were closed, something was already slammed quite shut for you. But this baby, my baby, is so open, she cries and laughs with such ease. We place her gentle, delicate in her crib, and she falls into something each night she cannot name. Waking used to frighten her terribly, she had just been somewhere else, and now her eyes open onto light, onto my eyes, and I am smiling. Not you, you were so crushed, planning your bloody escape, goodnight noises everywhere. My baby, this baby, I hope would never understand such pain, that she could whisper goodnight to the world. She's a baby, as long as I'm here, her world is. Goodnight to the old lady whispering "hush." When you died, I wanted to make a baby from your dead body, I was that desperate for life; can you even imagine that, John?
#Unreal #GoodnightMoon #Life #Babies #FallFromEarth
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I Once Found One Like No Other
Words and Image by Gretchen Gales
QuailBellMagazine.com *Editor's Note: First published on Sleeve Lit Mag on May 23rd, 2015.
I once found one like no other
That portion of me I thirst for, my lover. Black ringlets like hooks that draped from his head. Valiant yet gentle, or so his eyes said. That twinkled like starlight under the shimmering sun, that had gently kissed his complexion, the one whom I envisioned would bring me bliss of a devoted partner with a vow of fidelity in each kiss. But then as I feared he was an apparition It seems that I always fall for the fictitious. For I inquired Aphrodite so long for my wish. She roared in laughter, “My dear that doesn’t exist!”
#Unreal #Aphrodite #LoveIsDead #Apparition #VowsOfFidelity
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The Stripper
By Alex Wenderoff
QuailBellMagazine.com
Lazily circumambulating a metallic erection,
collected sharply folded small denominations, she paused with her back to her audience. The prize of her lustful gaze was herself. She peered into the mirror before her, as if to confirm her existence, or her perhaps her fate. Her buttocks moved independent of the rest of her body. For a moment she toyed with the ends of her bikini top tied in a Byzantine knot not even the most experienced seaman could undo. Staring obliquely at her mirrored self, she cocked her head to the side as does a child suddenly seized by curiosity, and ceased the sing song undulation of her derrière. Holding her right leg aloft Voraciously with the most genuineness displayed thus far, attacked an itch on her thigh. Before her right foot was deposited on the terra firma I had cleared out my wallet.
#Unreal #Sexual #ByzantineKnot #TheStripClub #Voracious #Lust
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Getting Our Bearings
By Rick Ewing
QuailBellMagazine.com When I was a kid coming up in the Heights in Jersey City, you could reach Lagos, capital of Nigeria, shooting down the Turnpike, in a quarter of an hour. Folks there wore alarmingly colorful costumes and spoke a language that sounded like wood being chopped. They’d ask us are you Igbo or Yoruba, teasing, and Dad would sprout this grin, going Well, they’re both fun to say. That trades at a premium with this pasty bunch. Which one gets us these souvenirs cheaper? The Breadcrumbs widget will appear here on the published site.
By Stella Padnos-Shea
QuailBellMagazine.com
Hung between photos of the children,
the miracle children, the children crafted with donor eggs, the children who may one day slay their parents who crafted them with love and rules and I click on the footage of one man slaying another. Shooting, ejecting, again and again, the opposite of fatherhood. What are these white Mothers teaching their sons, what are they drinking, how are they sleeping, to what devil did they pray as their bellies grew and “ten selfies not to do!” pops in, shares the screen with the dark dead man, the man with the blood pooling and the next link is I can’t believe it’s not butter and I can’t believe that to be a human is only a sinister meaning
#Unreal #Poetry #SocialMedia #Commentary #Facebook #Numb #Society #InstantCulture
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