Well darlings, it’s been a bit. One of my goals in the new year is to post updates more regularly — I’ve had friends bugging me for a newsletter, and am currently considering whether that’s something I could take on — more on that soon.
For now, please enjoy the two new stories and one poem that have come out in the last month!
“And You And I” — published in The Sunday Morning Transport
It all began with our daughter. I didn’t recognize her at first, just another little girl playing in one of those in-ground fountains, where children wound themselves in giggling spirals around the fluid pillars arising from the hot pavement, made bearable only by the water’s ephemeral presence.
In the vision, as in the potential reality it heralded, the pillars of water sometimes stopped all of a sudden, pulled back into holes in the ground like a tsunami tugging the ocean. The children knew what this meant, and most ran screaming in anticipation to the middle of the giant concrete circle. Suddenly the superpowered jets dotting a circumference erupted. Having collected the retreating water, they now sent it back in majestic arcs that met each other—and the dancing children—at the circle’s center.
But our daughter didn’t run toward the delightful downpour. Instead she ran to me.
1. You can’t see what’s coming, but I can. Some foreshadowing might be appropriate here, a look into the future. Care to gaze with me into the crystal ball? (I don’t really have a crystal ball. I am coming to understand there are two interrelated versions of sight). There will be colossal upheaval, out of which our models have predicted total societal collapse. The glaring issue is this: Uninhibited vision will be imperative. (Am I mixing the two versions of vision correctly? Such that the physical reflects the metaphorical in the manner you appreciate in literature?)
“Ars Poetica” — published in Haven Speculative
You’ve written your last words; you will not speak them
His spell would not let you, anyway
Not now; after years of wielding tiny pins—
too small for dancing angels—
he ruptures your vocal cords, tearing (through)
Only a croak escaping
Jenna Hanchey 