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A Quartet of Voices Words: Emily Shearer Image: Deniz Ataman QuailBellMagazine.com Come out to the garden with me. See how it lies fallow in dark November hours. I have a trio of instruments: a spade, my hands, this pen. And a quartet of voices: yours mine and ours. I will sing to you of the edge of my despair. Buried in a mound no bigger than a head of hair, shorn and fallen to the ground brown as the undersides of eyelashes where they rim the bowl of eye A small grove, tucked in the corner, beyond where the stepping stones trail. There I’ve planted, love, one apple and one pear. They flower every year, white blossoms, naked dross, suckled by bees, envy of snow, but they have yet to fruit, yet to grow. #Unreal #Poetry #EmilyShearer #Imagery #BuriedLove #Nature Visit our shop and subscribe. Sponsor us. Submit and become a contributor. Like us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter.
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China StreetEditor's Note: This story first appeared in Quail Bell 'zine: Issue 6—Feminism. Check out more original stories and art by ordering the 'zine. Labor Day promised independence from pawing bosses and boyfriends who thought themselves deities. The moon sauntered out from a curtain of clouds, whispering, “All things must end.” Even freedom—nebulous as a wisp across the sky—eventually ends. Because rent costs more than a wink, and parents fret and call and yell, and starvation in a land of omnipotent fast-food chains is a reality. Because ordering the number one combo does not conclude your choice-making for life. It gives you a sloppy burger and over-salted fries that you have the privilege of scarfing down and resenting for the rest of the day.
So the three sisters flittered through that leg of the city that squats over the river. The girls panted and fluttered like three baby bats carrying a picnic basket full of mason jars. Those jars contained the late liquid lunch the sisters had prepared for an evening of fireworks. Three-hundred and sixty-four days earlier, the front page of the newspaper had shown gold flecks exploding above the shit-brown water. The photo would have made an ugly postcard, but the newspaper had the nerve to sell it as a print, anyway. If enough grandmothers wanted it to liven up their nursing home apartments, the newspaper stayed in business. But some astute layout editor had let the wrong date go to print: 2004 when it was 2014. It wouldn't have mattered except that Facebook had already been invented. “I don't even care about that stupid mall goth,” Nissa scoffed. She yanked her end of the picnic basket handle too hard and somehow scratched Amelia in the process. Chandra, who had stopped helping with the basket a few moments earlier, was rubbing her engagement ring. The Breadcrumbs widget will appear here on the published site.
Supposed Song of Myself I am a student who sits at a computer desk trying to emulate Walt Whitman. I am sitting by a warm fire with friends, trying to emulate Walt Whitman I am celebrating all of my atoms, which are also Walt Whitman’s. I am not Walt Whitman. I should try to emulate a more famous Walt, like Walt Disney. I should find a way to write the most perfect poetry. I should hoard my money in a porcelain pig. I should find some first. This is me taking myself seriously, but not really. This is what my poetry looks like when my friend plays Grand Theft Auto next to me. This is the poem that will probably change the way you think about me. This is art, sweetheart. I’d lie and say that I’m in the desert, missing but not lost. I’d lie and say that I’m traversing the suburbs, drinking lemonade from lemonade stands. I’d lie and say that I’m Walt Whitman, writing decent poetry that’s worth reading. But I’d be lying. I’m Walt Disney now. It’s cliché if I write about being enamored with summer skylines It’s cliché if I rant about a member of the opposite sex. It’s cliché to write about death, as if I’ve experienced it. Call me cliché, just not today. Later, I’ll scratch words into a school desk. Not my name but words that I hope will inspire people in some way or another. But it will never be my name. Want me to tell you why I write? Are you ready for this? Well, I’m not sure that I can put it into words, Which is ironic, I know, especially When you consider that writing and Words are really the only tools I’ve got. #Unreal #Poetry #JonTurcotte #Photography #TylerRosado #Irony #Word #Write #CerebralExcursion 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.
(Spill-O's Easychair in the Lotus) By Colin Dodds QuailBellMagazine.com Spill-O’s heart became an easy chair. It made the hour that every hour stares through unfold itself sensibly, surely. It was a damned marshy predicament he’d gotten himself into. The jump into nothingness and the jump into everythingness were not as advertised. After years trying to cut the rope in his throat so the easy chair in his chest could blossom, Spill-O doesn’t know how he does it. But he leans back and the easy chair in the lotus unfolds to catch his cringing injury of a body. And the small centuries finally run through him unimpeded. #Unreal #Poetry #ColinDodds #AdventuresOfSpillO #Love #ComfortZone #Poem 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.
Wanderlust #Unreal #Photography #ChristaDickson #Wanderlust #Underwater 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.
Carousel we sat beneath the flickering shade of a willow tree. you're a sprinter, you said, a burst of energy, of light, sunbeams work overtime to spotlight your flight. the sun winks between the leaves. so, won't you run with me? i ask. and the breeze swoops in to tousle each spindly limb. i am in no rush, you say. yellow leaves flutter to the grass below, tiny dancing shadows, kissing our toes. i feel each step, thankful for the wind's hush. you lean against the trunk and watch the wild wind twirl billowy branches like a carousel. you smile. i dance. you dig your toes down like the roots below - perhaps to feel Her heartbeat that keeps the tempo while i dash dancing like limbs, reaching back to you. #Unreal #Poetry #Music #DenizAtaman #TylerRosado #Love #Nature #Remix #Sampling #OppositesAttract 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.
St. Gemini Looks at the Map St. Caduceus Drew Her One Cloudy Morning to Find Her Way Home By Fox Frazier-Foley QuailBellMagazine.com Your understudy seduces me like an aria grown redundant until the mezzo hoarsens & you lean in, knowing this could get interesting — my precipice, antelope, stone-cutting sloth. Establish your estuary in me during sleep. Alarm like a lazy cock, it doesn't wake me from my dreamt botany, barely midwifes me this monotony: I abandon myself, an impotent boy plunging into honeysuckle. Daybreak comes embarrassed & bright as misplaced snowfall on some Atlantic cape in autumn. We swim The Breadcrumbs widget will appear here on the published site.
Stall Zia, I do not see your report in my inbox. Are you having trouble with your internet?
Her thoughts interrupted by the bubble message that popped up on her computer screen accompanied with a soft blurp sound. Zia tilted her head two inches to the left, past the paper partition separating her desk from her boss' desk twenty feet away. Her boss' eyes glued to the screen, while her fingers typed with such charisma, Zia wondered if that was what Strauss looked like when he was composing his symphonies. Allegro, she thought. The office radio blared a few feet away from her: an early morning prank gone wrong, where the victim heaved in profane beeps and fits of scratchy rage, followed by a geyser of laughter from the radio host and prankster. You've been pranked! Thanks for playing. You win a $20 gift card to some chain restaurant. Now for the weather report. Zia looked looked up to her computer screen and back down to the yellow legal pad in front of her. Her personal notes mixed in with her work notes; a scrawling jazz composition devoid of any blinking cursor on her moniter; a cursor that resembled more of a ticking bomb than a metronome. Lines of neat block letters divided by half drawn flowers, numbers, dollar signs, and abbreviations. In the upper left corner was the cryptic reminder to send her boss the report before she fled for the day yesterday: The Breadcrumbs widget will appear here on the published site.
Grandfather and I Brown paper bag softly Tap-tapping against a black-legging Clad thigh, Rare winter sun watching us feebly As down the street we walk by Holding his eighty-year-old hand-- Wrinkled like soft parchment, but with Surprising strength In his arthritic, Calculator-cramped fingers. Brown plaid dress gently Swish-swishing against a black-legging Clad thigh, Burlingame trees staring at us in envy Walking towards home Talking and laughing with my eighty-year-old Grandpa. #Unreal #Poetry #NaomiYung #Photography #DenizAtaman #Grandparents #Nostalgia #Childhood #Admiration #Roots 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.
Harps I was fifteen when I decided to spend New Year’s Eve with my friend Ross and his family from up Magee’s Creek.
The usual public festivities took place in downtown Ellis when a giant pear made of paper would be dropped from a third-floor window on a line while a fuse burned and a crowd cheered. A Dave Matthews cover band would most likely play. Of course this was unacceptable and we tried to get as far away as possible. We drove up from Ellis across the muddy Oussawack River into the pockets of strip malls and drab suburbs on the county side. The radio filled the car with cellos as we passed thickets of frostbitten woods along the heights. Ross had a thing for cellos. The Ford was rattling as my companion drove into one of the larger developments. The low sun was a sickly winter yellow against the cloud-covered horizon, seen between the two-story houses. It was all without warmth and without motion. “I need to stop for a minute and say hey to Claire,” Ross said as we went up the main street of the giant mass of houses. I had never met Claire. The house was at the end of one of the two-dozen or so cul-de-sacs. I was thankful I never had to learn my way around that neighborhood that sat on the top of a small hill with a cluster of short pines behind it. Ross parked and we walked up the yard. I buttoned my jacket. It was a circus in the house. About twenty older students from the Senior High School were lounging in the front room. I didn’t know any of them. Ross wandered around to see his friends and I was left looking at the bookshelf in the corner. |