In Which are recorded Arguments and Misunderstandings among Neighbors and Subjects in the Village of Gebsattel in Middle Franconia during my Tenure as Bailiff, and how the Same were Adjudicated and Settled, as well as Other Matters requiring Punishment in the Stocks.
Beginning in the Year of Our Lord Christ’s Birth,
Anno 1574.
Erhard Wolffhardt, Bailiff in Gebsattel
(Excerpts)
Continue reading “Manorial Roll by Ann Tlusty”
Maggie walked into the kitchen and flinched. Bert was in the kitchen. In her spot.
The clock chimed. Seven minutes before the day started. She teetered forward, shielding her eyes as the jumble of papers and pens on the kitchen table leapt out at her.
She gasped, hot tears stinging her eyes. Bert had desecrated her workspace.
“Good morning, darling,” Bert said, turning his head. “Tea will be ready in a minute.”
Continue reading “Five Millimetres from the Rim by Charlotte L. Sworn”
For two months of Summer, I spent my midnights wandering the streets of London with a sleepwalking girl. It wasn’t voluntary, to be honest. I was on my way home one night after my shift as a street cleaner: the pavement was empty of pedestrians, roads empty of cars; the night shift staff stirred the dim lighting of the dining rooms with their exhausted silhouettes; tumbleweeds of Gregg’s wrappers flew past my peripheral; pigeons strolled mindlessly over the large tiles of Trafalgar Square pecking for bits of croissant between the cracks; rats drunk on Aperol spritz bin-hopped in a chorus of squeaks; waltzing flies cast flecks of shadows beneath a streetlamp.
Continue reading “(Sleep)Walking London by Akio Lê”
“Sorry?” The young man looks up from his reading.
“That a mystery?” the visitor says again. Odd for a July night, the tweed overcoat. It’s fraying at the cuffs, and stains, smudges on the one shoulder, soot all down that side, the extra long scarf rounding the throat then across his chest, wrapped like a royal sash, and beneath it a t-shirt, yellowed at the belly.
Continue reading “Mr. Terrence by Rick Moss”
The cross looked small from the back of the nave. Flanked by emblems of the Alpha and Omega, the Celtic Cross, called the Cross of Iona by the church fathers, appeared disfigured in the stained-glass light. Holling Krannert, statistician of the Second Presbyterian Church for more than fifty years, had a decision to make. Having spent the night in a pew, meditating upon the sins of the world, he would decide the fate of the church—whether the building he loved and served so faithfully should live or die in flame.
Continue reading “The Soul Counter by Charles Sutphin”
An Unfaithful Translation of Arthur Rimbaud’s Une Saison en Enfer; Prologue & Ist Chapter: by Geraint Jonathan
Continue reading “Sunday Whatever – Meanwhile In Hell, It’s Spring: by Geraint Jonathan”
Birthday Well Wishes
Happy 250th Independence Day to America! (and to everyone also born on this date, Eva Marie Saint at a whopping 102 and Elliott the Header Pigeon who is attending the Extreme Cigarette Butt Eating Contest in Philadelphia this holiday weekend ). It may not be in season for some to say nice things about and to America, but the U.S.A., like most places is far more good than bad and is a collection of people–not just one person. To all who sneer, I suggest you read what J.C. had to say on the subject of stone casting. And although it is further ironic that the UK should wish the former colonies happy birthday, just think how chaotic things would be if the Revolutionary War had gone the other way. PM Trump anyone?
Now, On with the Show
Asking writers why they write is pointless. It’s the same reason why kleptos steal and killers kill; it is a mental compulsion, sometimes good sometimes bad and always somewhere along the borders of insanity. Some people have the writing disease way worse than most. The bad off will cut words into their skin if they have no other way of getting the job done (and for the visual artist, Van Gogh’s ear-ectomy definitely got a lot more than a thousand words across). Most of us can control ourselves to the extent we can wait until a saner method is handy. But the answer is always the same. Writers write because they are writers. Birds bird. Lizards lizard. Maggots get compared to unsavory people. Writers can go through long periods of inactivity (for some that may be weeks, for me not even a day), but there will always come a time when it must happen, or (to quote Hemingway) we state: “I feel fucked inside.”
Continue reading “Week 591: Natural Born Quillers”
The music thumped up the stairs towards him in the queue. I’m way too old for this he thought, edging forwards. Much had changed since last time he had been to a night club; more remained the same. Ticket checked on his phone, driver’s license scanned. Why? No one in their right mind could possibly think he was 18, his age telling in the wrinkles on his face, the receding, greying hair, the middle-aged spread. But also in invisible ways: twinges, aches, sadness.
Continue reading “Boots and Cats by John Tregoning”
Woke up to frosted window panes and frozen pipes. Marta and I made do with the gas stove, lighting it old school with matches against the hissing invisible stream. Water supply was low, but would last us a few days. The driveway had vanished beneath the white, with only the stitch of barbed wire fence to mark road from field. While I was attaching the snowplow blade to the truck, Marta called out from the house that Pam, our neighbor, wasn’t answering her phone.
Continue reading “Cup of Flour by Tim Boiteau”
Boo-hoo, as we say in Staten Island, New York City, New York.
Ornella Splice is crying. She sobs and wails and moans and heaves with the weight of her sadness. She is soaked in her tears. There are traces – bubbles – of saliva in the corners of her mouth. She tries to utter words, but she is incoherent: all she seems to say is, “mwah mwah mwah,” or the subtle variant, “mwaw, mwaw, mwaw.” The former is reminiscent of the Staten Island dialect; the latter more common in the midwest. The subtle alteration in endings moving west is attributed by D. M. Pollard to the shift from crop farming to cattle herding during the middle and late seventeenth century. Pollard does note that Staten Island, itself, had no agriculture to speak of, shifting inexplicably from a foraging culture to a labour-union-kickback-and-freeloader-dependant culture, probably explained by the reluctance to become literate.
Continue reading ” The Crying Story by T. A. Young”
literally stories 