The Furious Gazelle

Literary as hell.

Tag: literary magazine (Page 17 of 24)

Riding The Red-White Caterpillar by Penelope Hawtrey

January 26, 2017 /

Park and Ride and I. January 26th. Ottawa. This is how we meet.

I park my car and then grab my overstuffed knapsack that rests on the seat beside me that holds various snacks and workout clothes. I turn and reach behind me, and blindly grapple to locate my brown leather purse that I flung on the floor of the backseat. My second bag weighs more than any Army Cadet has ever had to carry during a march.

“Ah! There you are!” I say to no one in particular. Locating both bags, I push my car door open as white snow whips against my face feeling like hundreds of pin pricks against my cheeks. The snow enters my Honda civic and dances around inside. With that, I stick my foot out. And that’s where we meet.

Snowbank and I; SNOWBANK 1, ME 0.

Snow worms wiggle between my hiking boot and ankle and then, smoothly shimmy their way down to my heel. When my feet hit the pavement, the cold ice crunches against my sock and bottom of my boot until it is pulverized into a puddle. And now, I have a puddle at the bottom of my boot. Continue reading

Things That Make Us Furious: “Prop Clothing,” by Eliana Sara

December 21, 2016 /

screen-shot-2016-12-21-at-2-20-08-pm

Dear Fashion Industry,

It’s time we opened discourse on a rather seedy subject in your world: prop clothing. Like the prop food adorning model furniture, prop clothing creates an illusion of actual clothing. The prop jacket may look as though it is completing your ensemble, but, unlike real outerwear, it offers no warmth.

Prop clothing comes in many forms- the super cute studded pleather “jacket” that’s “perfect for fall” but cannot keep one warm within the acceptable temperature range of fall in your region is a failure as clothing. It is a collection of cloth merely pretending to be a jacket and it may look like a jacket to all appraising eyes hence pulling off a “look”- but that is all and thus it is a prop.

Continue reading

“The Fellowship” by Maggie Light

December 9, 2016 /

The two of ‘em are having a real bad time changing Dwayne’s diaper, cursing and yelling for me to come out there and hold down Dwayne’s legs. But I can’t. I’m not done pouting. Mamma said I looked like a brood sow in my blue jean skirt, and Clarke’s still on my grievance list ‘cause he peed on my blue rug. Ms. Price would call that there irony, which is like opposite world, Clarke being a grown man and changing a nine-year-old’s diaper but going tinkle on my bedroom floor in the middle of the night. He apologized. Said he was dreaming he was back in Desert Storm and needed to show them Iraqis a what for. Then Mamma said he wasn’t in no Desert Storm and that he should know better than to drink fourteen beers when she’s not here to see to Dwayne.  

I was embarrassed for Clarke while it was happening, so I stayed under the covers with Jeep while he finished his business. Jeep’s a real silky black cat with one white paw, and she’s never peed on my blue rug. She did pee on Dwayne’s blanket, but Dwayne didn’t notice ‘cause he’s got dystonic cerebral palsy and pees in a plastic jug himself.
Continue reading

“Barred,” A Snippet of a Play By Lauren Jane Redmond

November 18, 2016 /

NOTES FROM THE PLAYWRIGHT:

I once read that New Mexico had abolished the death penalty, but that the repeals do not apply retroactively, leaving inmates currently sentenced on death row. This play was inspired by my imagining how those inmates must feel, knowing they are the last unlucky few to be executed.

When the script feels fast, it should go fast. When the script feels slow, especially in the pauses and towards the end, it should be slow.  

It should take its time.
Continue reading

“10 Alternative Rules for Writers” by Rajeev Balasubramanyam

November 15, 2016 /
#1 Cultivate social anxiety and some sort of an addiction. This will prevent you from getting a job.

 

#2 Scorn the work of other writers, preferably anonymously on the Internet. It makes you feel strong and powerful.

#3 Do not waste time ‘improving self-esteem’. You are a bad person. This is the only thing that makes you interesting.

#4 Do not read. It will make your work less original. Watch television if you need ideas.

#5 If anyone asks what kind of books you write say, ‘High literary fiction’. If they ask what this means, smirk and walk away.

#6 Do not strive for wisdom or insight. Concentrate on ‘cool’. If you need a definition of this, you’re missing the point.

#7 Never re-read one of your own sentences. You are a genius.

#8 Do not exercise or take care of your health. You have no pension or income and would do well to die as young as possible.

#9 Develop overconfidence and mediocrity in equal measure. It’s the only way to make people like you.

#10 Spend most of your time on the Internet. Everything else is distraction.

Rajeev Balasubramanyam is the author of In Beautiful Disguises (Bloomsbury), The Dreamer (Harper Collins) and Starstruck (The Pigeonhole). He was a winner of the Betty Trask Prize and the Clarissa Luard for the best British writer under 35. He is a fellow of the Hemera Foundation for artists with a meditation practice, and was recently write-in-residence at the Zen Center of New York City.
Visit www.rajeevbalasubramanyam.com and follow him on Twitter @Rajeevbalasu.

Three poems by Olivia Lin DeLuca

September 13, 2016 /

A CHILDLESS DREAM

 

See the spectral
blaze of a child’s
silhouette seared
against the plaster.
Sound waves of
laughter take shape
into that of a hum
drumming through
my body, no
ponderous
force pulling me
down the center.  
Her phantom bore
a hole through me.
Pink fractals sprout
throughout my skin.  
The longing has
gone, disintegrated
into the brackish
water that’s
extinguished the
flames of need.  
I no longer
sense the urgency
in my womb.  
She’s just a faint
memory of want,
an etching fading
from erosion.

 

INSOMNIA

 

I ruminate about the past and
future, in a world that subsists
in the present, spinning in a
cyclical existence.  Stories
form creases across the folds
of wan, scarred skin.  My
clothes are torn and faded.  
Dressed like a vagrant, I let
words slip out from my mind,
down through my fingers,
and onto the typewriter.  
Indelible memories flow out
in ink.  Into the night, my
head nods as sleep beckons,
a miasma of cigarette smoke
and ash hangs.  A nicotine halo
wreaths me.  Disgruntled
drones wake carrying off to
work in a sleep medicinal daze.  
I am the stupor filling in the
fractures of their skulls.  Dusk
has long passed and dawn
sneaks its way across stretches
of moonbeams over the
landscape of my psyche.  I
yawn, fanning my face with
scribbled pages in the heat.  
Show me it’s time to lay my
head, my world upon a strained
neck, down on my pillow
to greet the escape of slumber.

Continue reading

Poetry by David Spicer

August 19, 2016 /

BEFORE YOU ANSWER

Don’t analyze me, complain about my size,

or conclude I’m an idiot with cat breath,

don’t glibly flash frowns or smiles

over this octopus stew and ginger beer.

We’ve tangoed together longer than forever,

so don’t defer with those sly eyes or

grin with trust in your silver tongue.

I’ll splurge for diamond and platinum rings,

feared by everyone, for I’ll soon own

the Vatican. I know where cottonwoods

pray to depressed skies, when cardinals sing

to their shadows, why perfume lingers in dark Continue reading

“Send Her Fruit and Flowers,” a short story by Charles Haddox

August 12, 2016 /

Send Her Fruit and Flowers

by Charles Haddox

“You won’t find pepper trees this size anywhere outside the tropics.  They have to be kept above seventy degrees at all times.”  The guide rattled on and on.

    With thirteen-year old impatience, I was aching for the water lilies and bromeliads.  I let Selene, an extremely forward girl from one of the upper grades who was supposed to be a “student mentor,” rub my arm because it was stinging.  Arielle had tackled me, just for the hell of it, inside a greenhouse while the teachers weren’t looking.  She had also given me a punch that clearly hurt her more than it did me.  In front of the adults, Arielle put on her best Ellen Terry impression, soulfully imbibing the scents of flowers and gently parading a shiny Noble Chafer on her soft little palm.  If the beetle had been one of her fellow classmates, she would have crushed it with glee.

Continue reading

“A Redneck Romance,” by Samantha McCormick

June 28, 2016 /

When I was in sixth grade, my family moved to a town composed of four stoplights and air perpetually tinged with the smell of chicken shit.  With the subjective delicacy of a middle school worldview, I adjusted to my new surroundings like a Harvard Ph.D. candidate dining in a Waffle House at 3 a.m. That is, with mere anthropological interest trimmed in judgment.  Burgeoning teenage angst coupled with a superiority complex along with being new to a cohort of kids together since kindergarten lead to the inevitable: I made only one friend.

Her name was Tyler, and she hated it because it sounded too masculine.  She tried adding her middle name “Anne,” which to me made her sound more like television redneck heroine Roseanne and less like a delicate feminine flower, but it never caught on anyway.  

The first time I went to Tyler’s house, we were dropping her off after she had dinner with my family.  Tyler and I sat in the back seat with my little brother, a second grader high on ADD medications.   Continue reading

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