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No Sense of Shame If you want to be a writer
may you prepare for the fantastic Danger of pulling nouns and adjectives out of your mouth. like pulled teeth left under a spotlight with droplets of your blood & human truths. The Breadcrumbs widget will appear here on the published site.
One Finger at a TimeI first noticed the depression when I was clearing out the spider nests around the concrete foundation of my house. In the spring, the nests appear around the house in clusters like an infestation of Q-Tip ends. My wife and kids don’t care for spiders even though they help to keep the other bugs in check. Now that I think of it, the kids don’t really care for bugs of any kind.
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Terry Walmsley Goes to BollywoodTerry Walmsley’s journey so far has been what you could term as scenic; from a job in the City to cameos in Bollywood movies, via a stint in prison. Mind you, movies were far from his mind when he was working as a Forex trader for a major bank in London. But even back then, as he went about his life as a day trader, one could tell that he was destined to follow a different trajectory—he stood out among the other schlubs at the bank, with his boyish looks and posh London accent. But it would come down to one terrible mistake that would pivot his life another way. By the reaction of his boss, Terry could have committed an act of terrorism. Only that he had indulged in an extensive cover up for a trading loss, in the hope that the market trend would reverse and the bosses would be none the wiser when the loss had been offset. So, off to the jailhouse it was, for a period of 8 months. Some people are just not very large hearted.
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The Sacrifice and In MemoriamThe Sacrifice
The children respond to their Satanic urges willingly, stake the sacrifice to the cardboard mat laugh as it struggles, poke it with the end of a pin. This is not scientific, their mother warns, shaking her head in disproval. You have to be merciful. One more pin and the butterfly stops twitching, opens its wings one last time and dies, posed like a magazine ad for wildlife preserves or idyllic Midwestern vacations. The children back up from their work, admire the way the sunlight falls on the butterfly’s iridescent wings the way it settles on and illuminates the tiny scales perfectly almost as if it were still alive. The Breadcrumbs widget will appear here on the published site.
The Best ChristmasThe year was 1930. In the Tennessee hills near the North Carolina border was the village of Wilson Creek, founded by the Wilson pioneer family early in the 19th century. A narrow dirt road gave access to the village connected to a wagon road that leads up the hillside to another road on top of the hill. The village had a one-room school, church, general store, scattered houses, sawmill and water powered grain mill on the creek bank below the village. The sawmill employed ten men and the grain mill employed five, representing the only job sources in the village. The men all resided in the village. Nearby farmers purchased lumber, grain and supplies from the general store. The entire area was rural and the nearest town of any size was thirty miles distance. Local farms used horses and mules since nobody could afford a tractor. The entire area was on the economic edge. Other than village residents a fair number of people live in the hills, gaining subsistence from gardens and hunting game. A few dollars could be made trapping muskrats in the creek or gathering ginseng root, living off the land, building small cabins from natural materials. Woodstoves were usually fashioned from salvaged steel drums.
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Eternal Matter & MoreEternal Matter You too, pale fires, you hear me not…The corruption of the marsh engenders you towards morning, and you wander till the dawn, but without thought, without will, without throb of life. --Chekov Plateau sunflowered bove this village stops the world, if climbed earthends in candycane smokestacks and ghostmachine windmills. So climbed retrenched the mourning hag with black umbrella chinned, her pitchfork over other shoulder, emboled for this while some (phages mostly trulling through Its chaff) learn spells in hopes each day the day before becomes no matter its content, truest paeans always misnamed the maledict (can’t pray noologists who are themselves no better than a prayer). Eleven meters in the field she has a rootgarden spiraled withershins she reaps before the harvest, the bees like painless buttons on her face, umbrella shadow’s want, pitchfork caning her to earth and worse, the mandrakes saved. As if wellslept beneath the flowers dusk sends out the hag, a smile almost somewhere in there, the rouging pox. None see just where she goes though many think to follow, never do, nor care to watch in storms her raised pitchfork, umbrella cinctured (she sleeps within a wellbuilt home her sister’s husband made and drinks between her waking dreams where youth has never left). The Breadcrumbs widget will appear here on the published site.
PicturedI sit across the street in this cafe to watch couples walk hand-in-hand into the iconic tower. Each prancing around as if they are the only couple in the whole city who are hoping to ride up for the top floor view. I watch with envy as they take selfies, thinking this monumental moment ought to be documented for their friends at home. I try not to notice when they show up on my feed. As I sip on a cup of burnt coffee in the afternoon sun, I look across the busy street. And then I saw him in the chocolate brown tweed jacket with black buttons and her in a cream colored knit sweater and navy scarf, both of which grabbed my attention. It was the first time I’d ever seen a contemporary clipart couple leaving the screen and looking to join the line.
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Opening Day in a Small Connecticut TownThe intrepid youngsters swerved their bicycles around Hale’s streets and lanes even during austere biting February, so certain of their talents that they defied scared car drivers to swerve around them. Occasionally one of these daring young men, and they were always youthful males, struck an ice patch or swerved into a snow bank, but generally their gallantry went unrewarded.
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ExecutionsWhen I imagine
the execution of my wishes, a thick tobacco smoke billows from my lips There is such stress in that remembering, in that contrast of living & longing The Breadcrumbs widget will appear here on the published site.
The LighthouseBy Lynn White QuailBellMagazine.com *Editor's Note: Previously published in With Painted Words October, 2015. I was a little crazy
to buy the old lighthouse. I knew it at the time. But I wanted to be somewhere, somewhere where I could shine, shine it’s lamps out into the vastness, shine like a beaming beacon. And it was so high. It matched my mood and then some. Higher than high. Higher than high. |