To further distinguish our site from other literary ventures, Logos will no longer be accepting works of prose and verse that have been previously published, whether online, in print, or both, and, from now on, will only accept original, unpublished manuscripts of prose and verse. Excerpts from a novella, novel or poetry collection slated to be published, however, may still be accepted.
poetry
Fiction Circular 8/1/20
A weekly dissemination of fiction writing from around the web by Kaiter Enless.
From Caliath: Notes on the Creative Corpse by Joao-Maria (a poem concerning the creative process).
To dispetal the cosmos and the cosmos, place those steatic specs upon the unreeling…
J.M., Notes on the Creative Corpse
From Cyberwave: Coloring For Karen (a scifi short story).
With a wave of his hand the boy produced magnificent shapes and formed islands out of the empty ocean while standing on the cliff. His eyes were closed but he knew he didn’t need them. He used his imagination without bounds, and without the influence of external stimuli.
– Cyberwave, Coloring For Karen
From Jan Christensen: Sad Victory (a mystery short story).
“Of course I’m okay.” Her mouth twisted around the slang word disagreeably.
– J. Christensen, Sad Victory
From Horror Tree: Pale Horse by Lynn Love (a tale concerning a man who may or may not be crazy hears a voice that may or may not be there).
‘That ain’t no wind,’ he says. ‘There’s a voice. Can’t you hear it?’
– L. Love, Pale Horse
From The Chronicles of History: Beyond The Trees by Samantha James (a short story of the fantastique).
A young orphaned girl flees her home one afternoon and finds herself lost in a big scary forest. The child becomes injured but is assisted by an unlikely companion that claims to know the way to the girl’s home at the abbey. Not all is as it seems …
– S. James, synopsis
Warm-up Exercises
by John Grey
When lovers argue
the air gets it in the neck
dreams are full of such crackling currency
but when I awake I can’t spend any of it
lost love is like eating alone
in a restaurant
sipping the last of the wine
while fish bones stare up at you
a statue is the last stop
on a long journey of made-up stuff –
this figure in marble
bears as much resemblance
to real flesh and bone
as a cushion does to a razor
there are no more stage villains –
nobody wears top hat and tails,
flicks their moustache
while tying women to railway tracks –
these days, it’s tee shirt and shorts,
a day’s growth around the chin
and a back of the hand
slapped hard against a woman’s cheekbone –
ah, Snidely Whiplash,
at least, the boos rained down on you
river’s frozen,
roads aren’t plowed,
can’t get out my front door
for the drifts –
War and Peace
this could be the day
of Chapter One Page One
I must have loved
a thousand women
and I ended up with one –
there are some instances
where math need not apply
there’s an article here
about this guy who found his wife in bed
with another man –
he divorced the wife
and married the man –
and then it’s on to the latest peace talks
for more irony
1 made a few phone calls
sent emails
even wrote a letter
but it’s the same old same old –
you still can’t go home again
my fingers look up from the keyboard
ask then why have you brought me here.
John Grey is an Australian poet, US resident, recently published in Examined Life Journal, Studio One and Columbia Review, with work upcoming in Leading Edge, Poetry East and Midwest Quarterly.
Upon Your Arrival & Beyond
by John Grey
The people of America
go crazy –
from fishing folk of the Maine coast
to the California
surfing crowd –
a baby emerges from a deaf-mute’s womb
and it’s still not promiscuous
or willing to kill for a living.
It is watched over by old names
and new slatterns.
Character is born
just like that baby
but with its own blood spilled,
not the mothers’.
Being bathed continually in filth helps.
Job or first love –
numbing terror is not the same as emotion
until it is.
Sadly, a woman being choked
to death by the rough hands
of a stranger
cannot answer your twenty questions –
luckily, the default in every case
is “false.”
And then there’s marriage,
a rash dash
and without cash –
three children are raised
by the state –
on a cross to be crucified
as it so happens.
So a house in the suburbs it is –
but what about the hundred foot giant
trudging through the neighborhood
planting the seeds of strip malls?
A water-pipe bursts –
the truth emerges –
rats too can drown –
they’re just not in it for the water sports.
Everyone is ungainly at ocean’s edge.
You toddle like you’re ten thousand pounds overweight.
Fat red flesh predominates.
You’re prisoner of the economic climate.
If the deal falls through,
you can always go back to bathing in filth.
The mind fantasizes
over hedge fund managers
in a great Wall Street extravaganza
that’s been sent to destroy you.
It is only in secluded places,
far from the trained eye of the television camera,
where anything of sense is being said.
And there’s nobody
to speak up –
and, to make things worse –
the car’s not an automatic –
at no time in your life
were you instructed
how to drive a manual.
John Grey is an Australian poet, US resident, recently published in Examined Life Journal, Studio One and Columbia Review, with work upcoming in Leading Edge, Poetry East and Midwest Quarterly.
Where I Live Now
by John Grey
I’m trying to figure
what it is about this house –
egg yolk sinks
into a ketchup frieze –
squashed ants line the sink,
empty bottles vie with the half-full –
I live between a thankless television
and the doorbell –
I sleep on an old couch
with half the flesh torn out –
wallpaper’s ratty –
spit has congealed –
excuse my appearance –
I was up all night, expecting guests.
John Grey is an Australian poet, US resident, recently published in Examined Life Journal, Studio One and Columbia Review, with work upcoming in Leading Edge, Poetry East and Midwest Quarterly.
Kindling
Upstay the course, the wood is vast,
beasts there chitter, in dark amass;
fabrefaction—blade from bone,
amarulence to the thorny throne.
Ramiferous lanes, newly cleaved,
swift through, gather fallen leaves.
And in the clearing, xylem stacked,
by sanguine tongues, the ochre wracked.
Tawny char there howls ablation;
the raze but kindling, for creation.
Vnius compendium, alterius difpendium
Two snakes entwined,
gnashing feeble fangs;
fragile scales opposed,
both harken to reign.
Tangled in feud,
on bellies crawl;
nix liberty, save,
a serpent’s fall.
Thus must one,
the other eat,
that a dragon may rise,
from strife’s red heat.
The Maker
He was a creator of talent rare, whose works earned great reknown,
and jealousy in equal measure, from those much lower down.
He labored beneath a city vast, ruled by lust and grift and gun,
where much work was accomplished, to ensure little else was done.
Shortly, a savage band assembled, around the maker’s domain,
with precious little consistency, official concern was feigned.
“His wonders he shares not yet enough, and so unto the flame,
his worldly arts and life, to avenge the affliction of our shame.”
Loosed from the throng were feral cries, as the fire ate all away,
“The villain was at long last dead, the people have won the day!”
Yet months after that fateful encounter, without the maker’s sway,
confidence in the system’s operation began a sure decay.
Despondent, a former acolyte of the creator, sat a lonesome bar,
and drank in mournful silence, and dreamed of faring far.
There in the corner he spied, suddenly, a odd man, robed and pale,
who seemed somewise familiar, and so he gave him hail.
The stranger raised his head, and to the drinker’s great surprise,
found none other than the maker—xanthous luster in his eyes.
“Tell me, man, what are you, that could escape that fiery suit?”
The maker turned to the souse and answered: “I am absolute.”
The Eagle & The Serpent
Under cyclonic skies,
where no owls sling;
upon brawny boughs,
where no doves sing;
over roiling wastes,
where no eagle flies,
there, the scene,
where the serpent shall rise.
Singer
by Gale Acuff
I love Miss Hooker more than I love God,
I guess, which, I guess again, is a sin,
but she’s my Sunday School teacher and she
tempts me so I can’t help myself even
though temptation’s not her fault and I’m not
sure it’s even mine so I’ll blame God, He’s
the One Who made us but if I’d made her
I couldn’t improve on His work, red hair
and green eyes and freckles, more than enough
for three more people, maybe even more.
Miss Hooker’s 25 and I’m just 10
so the chances of us ever getting
hitched are pretty slim but that’s what God’s for,
making a miracle if I pray hard
enough, and I could use Miss Hooker’s help
but I doubt that she’s got it bad for me
–she probably likes grown men, guys who shave
and have hairy chests and legs and maybe
backs, and hair in their nostrils and who speak
like Father speaks, or God in the movies,
in a real deep voice and even have jobs,
money helps when you try to get a gal
so you can pay for the hamburgers and
banana splits and movie tickets and
bring her flowers, which aren’t cheap unless you
pick them yourself and then she’ll think you’re poor
or maybe a little crazy although
some gals like a-little-crazy but not
Mother, she’s all business. I brought home my
report card yesterday and made straight-As
–I’m not bragging, I just know the system
–and only one B, in Conduct, and she
yelled at me, I don’t care how smart you are,
young man, but if you can’t shut up in class
good grades don’t mean a pecking thing. Father
had to sign it because she wouldn’t and
he didn’t even see it, the B, just
said, Not too shabby, boy, not bad at all,
and smiled and winked and I told him about
Mother and before he could say something
I told him that I’m sweet on a woman
but I didn’t say who, or is it whom,
just that she was older and he replied,
Well, it might be a good experience,
whatever that means. I think it means that
I’ll never snag her but I didn’t ask
why because he was reading the Sports page
and I respect that. Yes sir, I said. So
I went back to Mother and asked her if
she was still sore. Thread this needle
for me, she ordered, rubbing her eyes as she
rolled her chair away from the Singer. It’s
on wheels, the chair I mean. Ezekiel
is what I thought of and I’m not sure why
but I threaded the needle and before
she could say Thank you, so I don’t know if
she was going to, I said it aloud,
Ezekiel I mean, and she said, Damn,
I pricked my finger, which was the first time
I ever heard her swear but that’s alright,
she was in pain and when I grow up I
want to be a doctor and married to
Miss Hooker and buy her a Cadillac.
We’ve got an old Ford but it’s got four wheels,
too. Father says, It gets us where we want
to go. He has a way with words because
he’s an Assistant File Clerk and sometimes
when he drives off to work in the morning
his hubcaps look like they’re spinning backwards,
the car’s I mean. Ezekiel went up
and saw everything and came back down
but I forget what happens next. I’m sure
Miss Hooker knows. I’ll ask her next week in
Sunday School but if I forget I can
always bring it up on our honeymoon
if I get my miracle. If not, damn.
Mr. Acuff’s work has appeared in Ascent, Chiron Review, Pennsylvania Literary Journal, Poem, Adirondack Review, Maryland Poetry Review, Florida Review, Slant, Nebo, Arkansas Review, South Dakota Review, and many other journals. He has authored three books of poetry, all from BrickHouse Press: Buffalo Nickel, The Weight of the World, and The Story of My Lives.
Righteous
by Gale Acuff
I don’t want to die but I don’t want to
live, neither, so what’s left I ask my Sun
-day School teacher but she just folds her arms
and shakes her head and frowns as she looks down
on me, which she has to do anyway
because she’s 25 to my 10 but
now she’s looking even down-er and I
feel even smaller so then I tell her
that I’ll pray about it and next week when
I’m back in Sunday School my attitude
will be changed and she’ll be happy again
but then she starts to cry–that should be me
shedding tears and I’d tell her so but she’d
say that tears are like Christ’s blood. I can’t win.
Mr. Acuff’s work has appeared in Ascent, Chiron Review, Pennsylvania Literary Journal, Poem, Adirondack Review, Maryland Poetry Review, Florida Review, Slant, Nebo, Arkansas Review, South Dakota Review, and many other journals. He has authored three books of poetry, all from BrickHouse Press: Buffalo Nickel, The Weight of the World, and The Story of My Lives.
Lot Less
by Gale Acuff
I’ll be dead before you know it, before
I know it anyway and maybe then
or I mean afterward I won’t know it
at all, ditto death, I’ll be alive some
-how and maybe waiting for another
life-to-come, maybe another after
that, but all I get at church is that we’re
all in this for the eternal life of
it, I guess by it I mean the life we
know now which is at least one-half of what’s
to be and probably a lot less so
after Sunday School today I asked my
teacher What if we die and there’s nothing
hereafter but she just smiled and said Pray.
Mr. Acuff’s work has appeared in Ascent, Chiron Review, Pennsylvania Literary Journal, Poem, Adirondack Review, Maryland Poetry Review, Florida Review, Slant, Nebo, Arkansas Review, South Dakota Review, and many other journals. He has authored three books of poetry, all from BrickHouse Press: Buffalo Nickel, The Weight of the World, and The Story of My Lives.
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