WHAT’S NEW

The Best of Mad Swirl : 09.30.23

The Best of Mad Swirl : 09.30.23
Let the beauty of what you love be what you do. Rumi ••• The Mad Gallery ••• Mobile Tranquility ~ Andrea Damic To see all Andrea’s whimsically dark works, as well as our other resident artists (50+ and counting!) take a virtual stroll thru Mad Swirl’s Mad Gallery! ••• The Poetry Forum ••• This past week on Mad Swirl’s Poetry Forum... we[read more]

Mad Swirl Open Mic : 10.04.23

Mad Swirl Open Mic : 10.04.23
Join Mad Swirl this 1st Wednesday of October (aka 10.04.23) as we do the open mic voodoo that we do do at our OC home, BARBARA’S PAVILLION! Starting at 8pm (note NEW start time), join hosts Johnny O & MH Clay as we will kick off these open mic’n Mad Swirl’n festivities with some musical grooves[read more]

Bloodstones: A New Mad Swirl Press Publication

Bloodstones: A New Mad Swirl Press Publication
Three years ago, on this day, Mad Swirl lost a good friend and the Mad World lost a unique poetic voice. Rob Dyer left this plane to explore what lies beyond and left us some of his attempts to understand this one in his poetry. Bloodstones is a collection of Rob's poems as they were presented over[read more]

POETRY FORUM

John Deere purgatory

by Preacher Allgood
you were always different
always looking for something
always running toward something you couldn’t define
and then you ran into the winter wheat harvest

three months and a thousand miles of sweat and grease
three states and a shimmering ocean of amber
a John Deere purgatory for misfits and mal-adaptive souls
an International Harvester bardo for run-aways and rejects
endless big talk about pussy and rodeo buckles
suffocating b.o. and pitiful bad jokes
never enough hot sauce for the shitty grub

eighteen-hour days under a heartless heathen sun
blown head gaskets and bent slats and bad bone weariness
blisters and muscle cramps and a constant itch from the chaff
and never enough time or quiet to collect your thoughts

but then by the time you hit the Nebraska state line
any thought you ever held has disappeared in the thick dust

Recently Published

The little girl hidden inside of me decorates everything with stickers

by Guest Poet
She doesn’t save a single sheet
“These are all the things I love most”
She says.

Showing me her walls
She tells me the names of each[read more]

YOUR SLEEP-TIME COMPANY

by John Grey
By day, we’re mere dust
but, come darkness,
the past grows in us.

We relearn what we have done,
why we’re strangers in heaven
but our names are known in[read more]

Restraint Is Strength, Temper Is Weakness

by Paul Tristram
I am ‘Gifting’ you with (Two) Words
… ‘Volatile’ and ‘Tenderness’…
to Balance the Scales within your
‘So fucking far from Equilibrium
that Screaming exhausts itself’ Mind.
Shatter-Pattern… no-one Cares
except[read more]

SHORT STORIES

Dancing On the Rim of a Volcano

Dancing On the Rim of a Volcano

by Carys Crossen
Berlin, 1925: Berlin wasn’t Chatham. Nora’s parents stated this twice a day. Remarkably, Nora agreed with them. The bank that employed Nora’s bowler-hatted, umbrella-carrying, Times-perusing father had sent him to Berlin to oversee a merger between two financial institutions. A less cosmopolitan couple would be difficult to conjure. Father spoke nothing but the King’s English, a strange source of pride with him. (It lengthened their stay abroad by three months.) Nora’s mother arranged flowers, tinkled on the piano, presided over the teapot with a smile. Respectability saturated them like wine would an alcoholic.[read more]
Jeannette, Reigning Sweet Potato Queen of L’anse Mauvais Chus

Jeannette, Reigning Sweet Potato Queen of L’anse Mauvais Chus

by Barefoot Cajun
It was 1953 one of the hottest, wettest and most hurrican-ed summers yet. People on the South Louisiana Cajun Prairie were pounded with the craziest of weather. Louisiana is known for its interesting, to say the least, meteorological feats! One of the reasons this Barefoot Cajun lives here. Gonna take more than a spot of poor weather to move this old man from his beloved prairie! Jeannette and her family lived right smack dab in the middle of an old sweet potato field. During the day Louisiana grew lots of those[read more]
The Geostorm

The Geostorm

by Susie Gharib
It groans in the West-North corner of our apartment. I do not know why its wailing brings Wuthering Heights and the Irish banshees to my mind. Only this household is without a child. The lightning flashes as in some Hollywood horror episode. We wonder whether to stay or depart. We opt to spend another night in our not-very-spacious car. I used to boast about being fearless at critical points in my life, which amounted, according to those who were familiar with my lifestyle, to being of the reckless type. Now the[read more]