“Your limbs grow weary, and the inn’s still far. Rest here. No need to punish your faithful and pleading flesh. Rest a moment, only a moment, and then proceed with new vigor and greater speed.”
“Foul specter, hush, quiet your insinuations and temptations. The inn’s fifteen easy minutes on a good road, and dusk stirs; the sun lowers, and your kind will be about soon. Still, still, it’s too soon to vacate your gloomy tomb.”
Potosí, Charcas, New Spain
1587
They call it Silver Mountain, but it has only brought misery to my people.
My head hurts. Kneeling, I plunge both arms into the pool of gray sludge, feeling for another lump of stone. My fingers close around a rock and I haul it out. A piece the size of an infant’s head. I know from overhearing the Spanish azoguero that after the bonding process with mercury, the silver in this rock is worth a small crate of porcelain. But I don’t know what porcelain is, except that it is some kind of platterware.
Continue reading “Goods from the Far East by Christopher Eirkson”
Leila Allison is indefatigable in her search for suggested re-runs and she has chosen a story by our editor Hugh for this week. This is what she said:
This is it guys, the big 228. It doesn’t mean much but I thought I would build it up!
I was inspired by Leila who commented on last Saturday’s posting.
Grace Walsh stood on the platform of the train station, imagining the dead. The tracks and platforms of the Bahnhof were cut into a hillside. On the far side of the tracks, the earth was held back by a concrete wall fronted with rough concrete pillars. The wall was the height of two Irish women, more or less. A graveyard crowded the brink of the wall, almost spilling over onto the tracks below. Above the concrete edge, Grace could see headstones adorned with bright splotches of flowers. The Viennese tended their dead well. At least you could say that much for them.
Jason Bendix had finished writing his new novella the evening before. It was the first mature work that he had written. For nearly three years he had been trying to find his voice and to whet all artifice from his sentences. Thirteen, fourteen stories had been his apprentice work. First, he had written stories of two or three thousand words each. Then, he had managed a few five-thousand-word beasts of burden. The three ten-thousand worders had been monstrosities which cost him dearly.
Continue reading “The Novella of Jason Bendix by Penny Faircloth”
“The Lord has remembered”
This was the meaning of my name. Zachary.
Since retiring from the San Francisco Probation Department and relocating to Sarasota, Florida, I have been lunching with Roscoe Bennett in a pizzeria on Route 41. We don’t go there for the pizza, which tastes like warmed-up cardboard; we go for the happy hour and a generous choice of beers.
The forest of the gods of torn jaws? Sure, I know it. And it’s pretty easy to get to — once you’re out of Bismarck here, jump on the I-94 and head west. Drive to the sun.
Continue reading “Awaken the Forest of the Gods of Torn Jaws by Daniel Newcomer”
You are not privy, as am I, to the trials that led to this suggestion from Leila Allison. Suffice it to say there is a cat in America who is cleaner than he was, and a cat bather who may stop bleeding soon. But, Leila’s trials are our rewards when she brings us, from the bowels of LS Towers this:
Continue reading “Literally Reruns – The Samurai by Larry Lefkowitz”
literally stories 