Grievous Angel Poetry & Fiction

New Flash Fiction: A Song About The End Of The World

27/8/2014

What would you do if you knew the world was going to end? In our latest flash fiction story, Mark Patrick Lynch has some suggestions and they involve witchcraft and singing whales. Mark lives and writes in the UK. His short fiction, mainstream and genre, has appeared in print anthologies and journals ranging from Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine to Zahir. His book HOUR OF THE BLACK WOLF is published by Robert Hale Limited. An ebook original novellaWhat I Wouldn't Give is available for ereaders. You can find him online at markpatricklynch.blogspot.com and @markplynch on Twitter.

A SONG ABOUT THE END OF THE WORLD
by Mark Patrick Lynch

My girlfriend told me the world was going to end. She’d heard about it from the whales. She understood their song and had been listening in while she took a bath, surrounded by scented candles.

As you can imagine, my girlfriend’s special.

She’s a witch. The full hocus-pocus. And yes, she can ride a broomstick - and yes also, I love her a great deal. When she told me the bad news, I believed her without question.

If the world’s ending, you don’t mess about, so we left the city and headed for the mountains. We didn’t go there because we thought we’d be safe (the whales had been clear – nowhere was going to survive this), we drove to the mountains to get some quiet, and because for a long time we’d talked about taking a trip there. Beauty’s all the more pleasing when there’s only a short time in which to enjoy it.

My girlfriend packed her broomstick. She pulled it from the back of the car after we’d got the bags out and forced open the cabin door. It was a real Grizzly Adam’s cabin, a single log room with a stone chimney at one end. I laughed when I saw what she was waving at me.

“Wanna try?” she said.

I was a hopeless failure. Although my girlfriend could jump into the air and thread in and out of the trees without a thought, I couldn’t even balance on the stick without falling off. Flying was an ambition too far.

We had a transistor radio with us, and in the evenings, if the atmospherics were right, we listened to reports of the coming end of the world. The whales had been right, though I found it odd to think they’d be singing about it. Humanity certainly wasn’t singing about it – well, apart from that old REM song – humanity was going crazy ape about it.

For quite a while we were unaffected in the woody mountains. But eventually that changed. One night – it was dark blue rather than black – the moon went fuzzy. Silver flakes spread out from it as if it had been made of snow. The next night there was no moon. Days later strange ash started to fall and the sky was constantly grey. We woke one morning to the brightest flash of light, which was followed by the distant krump of an explosion, and the earth bucked and the cabin rattled and our pallet bed buckarooed. Our storm lantern swung on its hook and took a long time to settle.

# # # # #

I know we don’t have long. My girlfriend casts spells to help us sleep nights. But we are scared now.

Before everything comes undone, I’ll put this note in a bottle. If creatures with intelligence pass this way, they might find it floating in the empty space where Earth once orbited and translate it.

Maybe they’ll be whales.

If you are, sing kind things about us. Somehow my girlfriend might hear you.

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New Poetry: One Short Verse and Five Scifaiku

22/8/2014

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Time for more poetry and proof that shorter is sweeter as today we have a total of six short poems (technically one poem and five scifaiku) from four writers. Enjoy. (A scifaiku is a sci-fi flavoured haiku - but you knew that already.)

Jocelyn
by Fred Zackel

Jocelyn kept her conscience in a gilded bird cage.
Her conscience had red hair & blue eyes.
Its body was marble-colored, or maybe ivory.
It had no arms only two wings.
It never sang.
The silence of failure was too great.

* Fred Zackel is a Lecturer in Literature at Bowling Green State University. Longer writings by him are available through Amazon Kindle.

Five Scifaiku

thirteen trees bear names
of girls that fell for space men
summer nights ago

* Dominic Daley lives in southeast England with his family, his cat, and his games consoles. His poetry is forthcoming in Songs of Eretz Poetry.

_____________

twilight -
the moons we haven't mined
begin to appear

***

low Earth orbit
watching the sun rise
somewhere else

* Joshua Gage describes himself as an ornery curmudgeon from Cleveland. His first full-length collection breaths is available from VanZeno Press. Intrinsic Night, a collaborative project he wrote with J. E. Stanley, was published by Sam’s Dot Publishing. His most recent collection Inhuman: Haiku from the Zombie Apocalypse is available on Poet’s Haven Press. He is a graduate of the Low Residency MFA Program in Creative Writing at Naropa University. He stomps around Cleveland in a purple bathrobe where he hosts the monthly Deep Cleveland Poetryhour and enjoys the beer at Brew Kettle.

_____________

sign on the wormhole shuttle:
"Please keep all appendages
inside of your body."

***

assimilation -
the proper way to wear
your mother's old skin

* Julie Bloss Kelsey is a short-form poet who enjoys writing scifaiku, haiku, tanka, and other short poetic forms. Her speculative poetry has appeared in Eye to the Telescope, Star*Line, Scifaikuest and Focus. Her poem Comet won the 2011 Dwarf Stars Award. Catch her on Twitter @MamaJoules

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New Flash Fiction: The Fadeaway

16/8/2014

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Life might be a slow train crawling up a hill, as the old blues song goes, but what about Death? In our latest flash fiction, Sarah Hendrix suggests it may also be like a train car going click-clack along the tracks. Sarah been published in the In Situ and Fish anthologies from Dagan Books, The Space Battles #6 anthology from Flying Penn Press, a flash piece inLakeside Circus and in October a short story in Abyss and Apex. You can find Sarah's blog at shadowflame1974

The Fadeaway
by Sarah Hendrix

There’s not much around us except the cars, the fog and the steady sound of clicking wheels against the tracks. The car sways reminding me of my heart, when I had one. As hard as I try, I can’t hear it anymore. The mist shrouds us in silence. Even my neighbors are muffled beside me. I don’t know where we are or where we are going. Some part of me hopes it’s just an illusion and I’m safe in my bed.

Maybe, it would be easier to let go of everything if that were the case.

You can’t tell time here. It could be weeks or months or just a few minutes. It feels like eternity, yet I’ve only just arrived. We simply go where the train takes us. Around. Up. Down.

It’s steady most of the time, small hills and rises. But sometimes it slows and the train begins to strain up a hill. The car rises into the air, preparing for a heart-racing decent with turns that slams me into my neighbors or the side of the cart. It’s the few times I feel alive again. Those are days that remind me of the heart I miss so much, scrambling to meet deadlines, the time I wrecked my car and sleeping with the lady from accounting that lead to the divorce.

I’m pretty sure now that I’m dead; I can still close my eyes and see the lights of the car in my lane—I wasn’t wearing a seat belt. There are other memories, lights, sounds but it’s all so distant. At least I can remember those last few minutes.

Others don’t know what happened. They simply find themselves here in a car next to strangers listening to the click, clack of cars as they roll around on the track. Strangely there’s no panic, no crying. They may look around, but there’s nothing to see except the ghostly image of the tracks and the mist.

Other days like today, the car are slow and steady. These are the days filled with fear.

At first the memories are strong but it isn’t long until you begin to forget. Little things at first, like the color of the dress your date wore to prom or your grandfather’s favorite song. It’s usually the things you never think about in life that disappear like soap bubbles.

The bigger memories take a while. Details, like your wife’s face as your wedding, fray at the edges until all you can remember is a blurry image. Eventually all you can remember is the dress (white?), and perhaps the outlines of the people there.

The seat beside me is empty, for now. Someone was there, days/weeks ago (I don’t know.) When he realized the memories were fading, he began naming things that had been important to him in life. His mantra was a steady stream of the names the people closest to him: Judy, Lilly, Matthew, Robert, Bobby, Jack, Smithy. But as time wore on, his list shortened, though on occasion after a descent, he would add a few more. He became silent. Then, he was no more.

Me? I don’t know. I’ve been here a while—probably lived more than my share of life. But there’s so little left—just a hand full of things that I can remember. Images mostly, some bits of music, a taste of something sharp. There’s no names for them now. Just pieces.

I don’t want to go, disappear, be forgotten, but as I sit here, the racket becomes louder, my mind empties and all I can hear is:

Click-clack, Click-clack.

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New Poetry: Doppler

7/8/2014

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New poetry today on Grievous Angel and we head into Deep Space with this poem Doppler by Jeffrey Park. Jeffrey lives in Munich, Germany, where he works at a private secondary school. Links to his published work can be found at www.scribbles-and-dribbles.com

Doppler

Two ships
in the night,
we pass each other
somewhere along
the trailing arm
of a remote galaxy –
faint ripples
in a vast sea of ink.
A split-second encounter,
a blur of silica,
soft pulse of engines.
And against all
logic and reason
I feel myself
burdened with regret,
memories
already shifting
to red.

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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.

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New Flash Fiction: A Song About The End Of The World

New Poetry: One Short Verse and Five Scifaiku

New Flash Fiction: The Fadeaway

New Poetry: Doppler

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