The Furious Gazelle

Literary as hell.

Tag: writing (Page 21 of 37)

“I Have a Fairy Godmother” By Gary Kidney

November 29, 2016 /

 

Please don’t tell anyone. They’ll make fun of me and already they do enough of that. Boys aren’t supposed to have fairy godmothers. And boys have other meanings for the word ‘fairy.’ They already call me enough names.

My fairy godmother’s name is Fée Marraine. I can’t pronounce it. I always say Pee Marinade. She doesn’t seem to mind. Some years ago, I try to tell my mother about her. I climb onto the counter while Mom cooks chicken for dinner. I know how Mom like to share recipes with her friends. Pee tells me a chicken recipe and I want to share it with Mom. I say, “Ma, want help from Pee Marinade?”

Mom looks at me with a horror-filled face. “Why would you say that?”

I cry. I know I disappoint her terribly. I’m not very good at understanding what someone else is feeling. But, when she looks at me, I see love in her eyes while the rest of her body is frustration and sadness. I know I should be a better boy. I try so hard. I never know why I fail. Every night, I pray about it. I know all of the incantation’s magic words like hallowed, kingdom, trespasses, and temptation. But I never be a better boy. Pee says it’s not my fault. She says: “Contrary to the wisdom, the fault isn’t in ourselves but in our stars.” Continue reading

“The Sermon,” by Fang Bu

November 22, 2016 /

 

“I adjure you, O daughters of Jerusalem,

by the gazelles or the hinds of the field,

that you stir not up nor awaken love until it please.”

–The Song of Solomon

 

What I thought

as he ran languid fingers

down the expensive territory,

waist and hard hipbone,

squeezed my ass like sweet

dough to be devoured

as his eyes ate greedily before,

mouth to lip, tongue

binding tongue close(d)

as a tight contract 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.

The Old Capitol, a short story by Karl Harshbarger

November 11, 2016 /

 

    The secretaries who worked in his father’s outer office didn’t even say hello to Casey.  That was because two of them weren’t really a secretaries at all but just students at the university.  They kept typing on their typewriters and listening to their Dictaphones.  And Mrs. Tish, the real secretary for the outer office, didn’t say “hello” either because she was talking on the telephone back at her desk.

    Well, it didn’t matter.  Casey walked right past the secretaries’ desks into the second office.

    “Hello, young man.” said Mrs. Paskow, who was his father’s personal secretary.  She had a drawer of one of the file cabinets open.

    “Is he here?” said Casey.

    But he had already gone over to the door and looked in.  What he saw was his father’s big desk and his father’s big chair pushed back from the desk and the painting of rounded hills of corn fields and rounded trees up on the wall behind his father’s chair.
Continue reading

2016 Halloween Contest Winner: “Der Wechselbalg in Tribeca” by Thaïs Miller

October 31, 2016 /

 

PART I: ERASMUS

The autumn breeze quivers my tiny, cotton collar. I survey the pumpkins lying haphazardly on Stuart’s Farm. Then I call out in the high-pitched voice of a three-year-old: “Pun’kin! Pun’kin!”

Susan’s red hair cascades into my stroller, shrouding my view. “Which pumpkin do you want, sweetie?”

I have never felt a propensity toward gourd shopping, especially not in Granite Springs, though now that she insists that I voice my opinion, I have no choice but to share it. I pull her hair aside.

“That one!” I point to the farthest and largest pumpkin in the patch, which takes us five minutes to approach.

Upon closer inspection of the plant, I reject it by stomping my feet against the stroller. I never tire of this performance, not in all my twenty-eight years of experience. Truly, the acting is unnecessary. This performance is something I add for pleasure. I am the epitome of toddlerhood. I have a small, button nose, large eyes, and peach-colored cheeks. Besides, with the right words and a little peas-blossom, I take on the exact appearance of the child I replace. When looking at me, you would never guess that I am middle- aged. Hardly! My skin has the sour and sweet perfume of diapers and baby powder. The fact that Susan has dressed me up for this inane holiday seems superfluous, and frankly, ridiculous. I do not want to be dressed as a stegosaurus. I am already pretending, why should I put on another mask?  
Continue reading

2016 Halloween Contest Finalist: “The Neighborhood Association” by Ani King

October 31, 2016 /

Nobody does Halloween like Ginnie Farrow. Just ask the neighborhood.

Sheila Canterwell, beloved kindergarten teacher, used to take the ribbon with her Haunted Haus, and before that Reverend Jim McGee smugly won decades worth of praise with his carefully planned Zombie Garden. He spent hours in his garage hand painting fake rubber limbs to look terrifyingly real when strewn in haphazard rows. We all enjoyed the results of their friendly feud, ohhing and ahhhing at each new height they managed to reach.

The prizes have varied over time, from gift certificates, to lawn service, to cash on occasion, but really, it’s the awe and appreciation of the neighborhood that most seek to win.  And growing ghosts? Well, that’ll do it.

Thing is, no one in the neighborhood ever managed to grow a decent ghost. Some tried, including Jim and Sheila, but the soil didn’t cooperate, or the corpse seed didn’t take even if it was planted at the height of spring, under a full moon. We once saw them collaborate a bit, trying to get a few to come up in the community garden in town. Nothing doing, it just didn’t happen.
Continue reading

2016 Halloween Contest Finalist: “Four Eyes, Four Eyes” by R. R. Moore

October 29, 2016 /

“Hairy, airy, Sophie- four eyes, four eyes!”  

Every word is punctuated by a sharp slap, a swift kick, and a trickle of warm spit.

Then Mrs Maleigh appears on the porch, ringing the brass bell.

“Inside, everyone!”

The flushed tormentors scurry into the schoolroom, leaving Sophie Turner to sit up.

Snow powders her tattered coat.  She’s lost one of her precious winter gloves, but there’s no time to look for it.  She hurries after her classmates, knowing full-well why she is singled out.

The other children can smell it on her, the oddness.  She isn’t a townie.  She wears patchy old clothes and too-big boots.  Her frizzy black hair won’t sit in a sleek, fat plait like the other little girls’, and she has a pair of thick glasses like two telescopic lenses.  

As Miss Maleigh begins her lessons, mean fingers pinch one of Sophie’s old bruises.  She bites her lower lip.  Another pinch… and another, punctuated by giggles.  Then the fingers start on her hair.   One, two- three frizzy threads are yanked out by the roots.  
Continue reading

2016 Halloween Contest Finalist: “The Last Ghoulies of the Season” by Sean Patrick Whiteley

October 28, 2016 /

 

Two days into November and the last ghoulies, the hold-outs, charged the roads of their neighborhood. Disguised as the living dead, a man of superior strength, an out-of-touch hippie. “Trick or treat!” they called into the clouds. The sun dipped an hour earlier, dark fell by 5:30. Those boys in their costumes, those tricky disguises, they demanded treats, still.

While two nights prior, the hours after Halloween night, most costumes were tucked into closets, or walked into basements, or hidden under beds, maybe to be handed down to a younger sibling in the coming year. The city’s girls and boys and babies and adolescents stripped the layers of ghoulish make-up from their grins. And in mirrors, they frowned. For it was over! They had the treats, the candy, the sugar highs, yet, it was all truly over…

Continue reading

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