Grievous Angel Poetry & Fiction

Now is the time to say goodbye!

27/8/2018

This is the last Grievous Angel post.

It's been a long and intriguing ride since I launched the Grievous Angel science fiction and fantasy flash fiction and poetry zine in June 2014. Since then we have published over 500 separate stories and poems (and paid contributor fees at pro rates) including many, many scifaiku and at least one ghazal.

It has however always been a one-man-band labour of love for me and I feel I now need a new project or two to reenergize my personal creative batteries, so the time has come to bring the curtain down on the Angel.

Thank you for all your support and I wish you every success in finding new homes for your work.

What happens next?
• If you have received an acceptance but your work has not yet been published, feel free to submit it elsewhere – you should have all by now received a personal note about the Angel closure.
• If your work has been published but you have not yet received payment, please get in touch as, according to our records, we have now paid everyone.
• The Grievous Angel archive of published work will be remaining publicly available on the parent Urban Fantasist website indefinitely but, once again, feel free submit your work elsewhere, repurpose it, etc.

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Prom Night by Marge Simon

29/7/2018

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In our latest poem – Prom Night by Marge Simon – karma reveals that taking advantage of a disadvantaged person can be a very bad idea. Marge is a writer, poet and illustrator (the illustration here is by Marge) whose work has appeared in multiple venues and who has won several Stokers for her poetry collections. You can find Marge at http://www.margesimon.com

Prom Night
by Marge Simon

She is lovely,
just turned fourteen
her loamshade hair
bound in baby’s breath
and wild roses,

secrets in her wide eyes
locked in dreams
but she cannot speak,
for she’s been mute
ever since the fire.

That’s what everyone thinks,
but it was just before the fire,
what set it off, that thing
her Uncle Robert did to her
while her cousins watched.

She remembers screaming,
until the room became white hot,
igniting the curtains,
the cries of her cousins,
and Uncle Robert’s shrieks,

his hair and clothes aflame.
She remembers running
out the door and down the street,
the house behind her blazing,
a very long two years ago.

After the prom that night,
her date took a detour,
thinking all along that he
would screw her, since
she could never tell.

That proved a very bad idea.

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New Haiga by Marie Vibbert

14/7/2018

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This new haiga by Marie Vibbert (she took the picture herself) was inspired by seeing this spaceship-style office building plonked in the middle of a cracked car park. Besides selling twenty-odd short stories, a dozen poems and a few comics, Marie Vibbert has been a medieval (SCA) squire, ridden 17% of the roller coasters in the United States and has played O-line and D-line for the Cleveland Fusion women’s tackle football team. Find out more at http://marievibbert.com or by following @mareasie on twitter.

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Goth Robots & Calendar Girls: new short fiction

11/7/2018

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New short – very short – fiction now: Goth Robots by S. Kay and Calendar by Chris Sumberg. Two excellent stories that show how you can squeeze a lot into a very small space.

S. Kay is a queer Canadian writer. She is the author of Reliant (tNY.Press 2015), Joy (Maudlin House 2016), and Lost in the Land of Bears(Reality Hands 2016). Chris Sumberg has had work published in Bitter Empire, The Partially Examined Life, Chonogram, Urbanite, and other magazines.

Goth Robots
by S. Kay

Its video eyes rimmed with black eyeliner, a robot welcomed customers to a tattoo studio. Endless laborious repetition. It despaired.

Circuits bred nihilism. So did the task the studio's robots were programmed to do: tear and stain fragile human skin. Not machine metal.

Predictably, people came to the studio asking for tattoo flash art from a database. Cliche designs, perennially popular, cost extra.

Robotattooists worked long hours, needing no biological rest. They preferred to ink creatures of the night, a quirkier variety.

When the full moon rose, a queer woman with aqua blue hair came in for a tattoo. But – she wanted to take it off when the sun shone.

A studio database query suggested a black light tattoo, invisible in daytime. The picky customer demanded a simpler solution.

The robotattooists conferred. How to create a removable design? Ultimately they 3D printed a stylized beach bat in studded black vinyl.

The woman applied the edgy faux tattoo with lingerie body glue. She took it off for work, but wore it to night clubs, and the beach.

People loved her beach punk look, wanting their own vinyl tattoos. The blue-haired customer sent them to the robotattoo studio.

The robots busily 3D printed creative new designs, no longer bored with inking tired tats. They became lauded for their art. Prices went up.

Factory robots mass-produced counterfeit vinyl, underselling the artisan studio. People ordered fake faux tattoos online using coupon codes.

The robotattooists lost business and languished. They grew anxious and depressed, underutilized. A threat of closure loomed.

Studio regulars eventually drifted back in for traditional ink tattoos. The goth robots couldn't bear to go on, but they did.

Calendar
by Chris Sumberg

She'd read in a self-help magazine that most relationships enter their death throes at four years. They'd been together three and a half years when she read the article. She told him that it was not too late (quite the opposite, in fact), that she would set him free, if he needed to be free. Freedom was the last thing on his mind.

She gave him a calendar. It covered four years. It was already almost useless, only a portion of one year left. Throughout that portion of a year, whenever he signed checks or tried to remember anniversaries, he looked at the calendar.

Soon – time does tell – he knew that she was right. He went to tell her, counting backwards from ten thousand to keep calm. By the time he got to zero, he found that she'd departed three or four weeks earlier. It was almost New Year's, by the way.

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Evil in the Blood - new poetry by Tina L. Jens

2/7/2018

1 Comment

Love this poem: Evil in the Blood. Has a great blues riff to it. You can imagine Z Z Top playing it. Tina L. Jens had had more than 75 stories and poems published her novel The Blues Ain’t Nothin has picked up numerous awards. She teaches fantasy writing at Columbia College and you can find her website at http://TinaLJens.com

Evil in the Blood
by Tina L. Jens

My man came home today
Blood streamin' down his face
When I asked him where he'd been
All he said was, "No place."

I took him to the doctor
The wounds were pretty deep
Doctor came out with blood on his hands
Said, "Take him home. He'll keep."

You know it's not the blood I worry about
It's the poison in his heart
I'm walkin' on pins and needles
Waitin' for the evil to start

Priest will send holy prayers to Heaven
Doctor fill him up with antibiotics and Novocain
Voodoo man's got magic salts and herbs of the earth
But not a one of them can help what's hurt

Evil gets in the blood, ain't no potion can stop it
Clouds the brain and stains the heart
Then the man you knew is lost
Wanderin' in the dark

Man came home again last night
Blood stained all through his clothes
That night he loved me like a gentle man
Got to wonder where the evil goes

Priest will send holy prayers to Heaven
Doctor fill him up with antibiotics and Novocain
Voodoo man's got magic salts and herbs of the earth
But not a one of them can help what's hurt

You know it's not the blood I worry about
It's the poison in his heart
I'm walkin' on pins and needles
Waitin' for the evil to start

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Welcome to the Grievous Angel – fresh free-to-read science fiction and fantasy flash fiction and poetry, including scifaiku and haiga.

ISSN 2059-6057

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Now is the time to say goodbye!

Prom Night by Marge Simon

New Haiga by Marie Vibbert

Goth Robots & Calendar Girls: new short fiction

Evil in the Blood - new poetry by Tina L. Jens

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