scribblings

may 24

the writing

He found her exactly where he’d been told: this unconventional Sleeping Beauty, not laid out in a tower, but tethered in the gardens. A trellis for the overgrown roses, thorns digging into green-tinged flesh. 
The prince felt no temptation to kiss her—and woe to the fool who finally woke her up, chasing some ridiculous fairytale.

~

They unlocked the sarcophagus, revealing the body of a shackled woman, immersed in regular seawater, draped in gold, pinned in place by a blade that pulsed with each beat of her enchanted, slumbering heart.
“So this is how they transport gods,” the thief king said. 

the reading

Poem: “Basement Suite” by Karen Solie (from Wellwater)

“The house tries to forget we are here, 
yet there are bars on the windows 
in some places, like childhood.

A slight clinging smell is associated. 
Every living situation has one.
It’s not the underworld, for Christ’s sake, 

which is everywhere, without depth; still, 
the gaze does learn to creep along the baseboards 
and sharpen its knives on them.”

Short Story: “Brewing Soursop” by Nyanka (NJ Fiction)

“I walk backwards to my cousin’s house. I have to. It is something the bones told me or my mother before she died. I can’t quite recall. Either way, it is impossible for such and such demons to turn you around when you are walking backwards towards your destination. So, I put one heel in front the other toward the house. My shadow leads the way.”