Mad Swirl Open Mic : 12.07.22
Join Mad Swirl this 1st Wednesday of December (aka 12.07.22) when we'll once again be doin' the open mic voodoo that we do do at our OC home, BARBARA'S PAVILLION and from our Mad Zoom Room (broadcasted via FB Live)!
Starting at 7:30pm, join host MH Clay & guest host Desmene Statum as we will kick[read more]
The Best of Mad Swirl : 11.26.22
"You have to go on and be crazy. Craziness is like heaven."
Jimi Hendrix
••• The Mad Gallery •••
"In Repair" ~ Jada Yee
To see all of Jada’s beautifully chaotic collages, 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[read more]
Another Mad Review : Farts and Daydreams
Farts and Daydreams (Joseph Farley, Dumpster Fire Press, 2022)
At any time it shouldn’t be a problem to be accountable for ourselves and the waves we feel inside our own minds. But since we’ve been our own basic problems for all our fortunate lives, those problems weigh as much as our bones and we grow to[read more]
A Turkey Named Harold
Harold flew out of a giant oak and landed with his feet on the ground. Three toes forward and one back. Like a Spartan with a red plume, he raised his head and showed off his vermilion dome. He flapped his wings and propelled himself onward.
The turkey gobbled as he pranced across open ground, searching for grasshoppers.
Children chattered with noisy excitement and stuck their heads out the windows of their school buses. Their eyes combed the fields in search of the bird. Where was Harold?
The local football team's mascot, dressed[read more]
Thorium
Hi. I’m thorium, the 90th element on the periodic chart. I’m a metallic mineral that tarnishes black when exposed to the air. In full disclosure, I’m also slightly radioactive. I’m the forty-first most abundant element in the earth’s crust but I wasn’t discovered until 1828 when a priest found me in the form of a black mineral on Løvøya, an island in Norway. I was sent to a scientific institute in Oslo to be analyzed. I was eventually determined to be a new element. Excuse me! I’ve been around since[read more]
Upon Meeting a Boy on the Street, While Carrying the Cremated Remains of My Alice / hiSStory / The Lake House
Upon Meeting a Boy on the Street, While Carrying the Cremated Remains of My Alice
The kid says it, and the bell can’t be unrung, “Your wife’s nothing but a pile of dirt, now.” Was it just the uncorrupted, clear-eyed innocence of a child, or did he mean to be cruel? And could a child, a boy of only eight or nine years old, be so insidious? I try to adjust my thinking, flip the switch from darkness to light, but the old filaments in my mind snap; glass shatters; synapses[read more]