For me, the blank page to draw on is a window to adventure.

Eduardo Risso

••• The Mad Gallery •••

Pale Blue Dot by Angeline Schellenberg

To see more of the simply charming & beautiful moments as captured thru Angeline’s lens, as well as our other resident artists, visit Mad Swirl’s Mad Gallery!

••• The Poetry Forum •••

This last week on Mad Swirl’s Poetry Forum… we caught half breadths to sip small deaths; we turned a key to unkept be; we grudged our thanks, postmodern pranks; we mirrored reflection of body rejection; we paused to pout some o’er elder outcomes; we mourned in the measure of bluebird treasure; we saw mother and son, discovered as one. Discoverers we, what our maps will be. ~ MH Clay

Life As Hoping Kevin Bacon Is In This One by Tyler Malone

The Pear Tree Cinema Club was an orange extension cord
that electrified black and white scenes where televisions didn’t grow
on nights given to the grayscales of my mom’s outdoor movie theater
—a TV set under our pear tree.

She measured out my skeleton and gave me eyes to find her
with no explanation for isolation after surviving men for us,
no airtime to army men, policemen, preacher men, cowboys—
we surfed past any who arrived as the idea of both our fathers.

Full blown popcorn bags, butter-soak scent salted the air, mid-reach—
she clasped my hands during a syndicated show’s death grip intro,
interwreathed, our palms peaked as a chapel steeple as she asked
who I would want

to love—
forever,

I saw an electrostatic face skirted with crow feathers lost
to cloud-clean night fireflies stitched in backyard oblivion,
the vanishing face cascading from murky kilowattage
with a wish to connect 8 billion living dots through incandescent air
to Andromeda, to use all space and time to map hope
that worlds collide before the sky’s collapse, calm-quiet
yellow-green bug blinks that traced tears
as her tone-gray son described his future to a televised forest fire.

A mother lifted imagination with all she carried above flames
as black and white jaguars raced to extinction
and then she discovered Tremors on channel 24, we watched colorless
credits to credits, every name accounted for but our own
death from below, the ground we knew, familiar territory.
Familiar family. Where you’ve walked is where you’ll die.

Could I save her from the ground? And if I couldn’t, was TV down there—?

An audience reverberated across cricket black painted-shut window screens,
moonlit antennas cross-tuned above uneven dirt’s foundation for uneven lawns.
We built home there but didn’t listen to our feet say that grass is dried pestilence.

We will stop making memories with one another to tell dirt stories.
Dew collected over the TV screen as night left to wake as morning.
Pears plopped, rot began, and we shared the wait for the next to fall
and not consider if the branches missed them, then all was dirt-cold,
our future apart from a black and white TV giving tree’s antenna stories.

The soft-focus face caught an arrow to span the sky,
to be a Superbowl commercial forever on rerun with vying subtitles
spelling electric scenes, as Mom spoke to the One True God I saw disappear
through an unplugged orange cord. We ‘tended worship in our hands,
our own congregation in ceremony as crickets held an altar call,
a prophet who found words for her testament. Fireflies became
the exact sizes of stars that glowlit her face as she testified, she has seen
a secret creation of a brand-new sun for garden bulbs to bend toward—

that’s the feeling to find out a boy existed under her skin,
she said, close as we could get, two mirrors left out in the dark
in hopes stars got sick of themselves in oceans and would come around to us
because darkness never tired of our discoveries, in and around a television
waiting for a landfill far from an airport so no one sees our family debris,
a static mother and son, as we were
a man’s dream of television.

November 23, 2024

editors note: Mother-Son dynamics, televised with six degrees of separation. – mh clay

The wisdom in the fluff by Heather M. Browne

The bluebird hears wisdom
finding rest in her fluff

feathers having flown
different journeys
my sister’s hair

Did I tell you she died last spring?
She is in there
woven
in and out

Lifetimes
Lifelines etched
in pine
needles
that this time
bring life

I yearn to touch her
here
there
feel her softness

but this must be known only
by the bluebird
who treasured her
kept her
while I let her tendrils fly

And now she passes her
over
just as my sister passed
to her off spring

I see the twigs
grass
twine
feathers

I see my sister’s hair

November 22, 2024

editors note: So light, such items from a heavy heart. – mh clay

Sarcopenia by KJ Hannah Greenberg

If only cheap groceries, not obtunded thinking, could be found in
Advancing years, then papas & nanas might enjoy a galaxy of
Sweetened weeks and seasons.

Aging, sometimes, means loss of muscle, strength, sunny disposition.
Less physical activity brings ambulation challenges, also the sort of
Troubles linked to hauling laundry.

Unluckily, epigenetics still rule the outcomes associated with grey hair,
Plus, liver spots. Former athletes may or may not outlive nerds whose
Close relatives were stalwart vegans.

Particle/wave duality is the mystery of longevity—nature, not nurture, can
Impact decades gifted to souls; cigs & candy canes might trump push-ups,
Might prove better than any night’s sleep.

November 21, 2024

editors note: A good night’s sleep is all anybody wants, so pass those Oreos. – mh clay

MIRROR, MIRROR by Colleen Boueil

Mirror, mirror off the wall…
we lack the fairest one of all!

Remember: Mirrors will steal your soul.
They are silent twizzle, shriveled silver
mercurial tarnish, shattered drivel.
Let’s pose the question…

Who’s the fairest one, pray tell?
Beauty’s getting easier!

All depends on what’s undone,
once surgeon’s scalpel has begun!
Botox lips offer a quick fix.
How about those lipo-sucked hips!
Vogue’s fake figures require such snips.
Only the surgeon knows for sure
how you’ve made it to haute couture!

Good riddance to those crow’s feet
38 DD gives new meaning to sweet.
Tummy tucks and butt implants
will reveal the ripped body of a gymnast!
But for how long will this fake beauty last?

November 20, 2024

editors note: Stretch your skin as far as your paycheck allows, or exchange your mirror for a window. – mh clay

Aura by Guest Poet Sayani Mukherjee

A silent Pitchfork, a rubble outside
I am all that I have been, not so well connected
A galactic fusion over the rimmed walls
A paycheck for the month it’s all a plaything
Poetry calls me often in the darkest night
A knowing edge surpassed me
As I went down the rabbit hole
This is the age of new thought protestants
A summer binder over at my glass
I know that buttercup lifelong simulation
Poetic engulfment is rising the aura is new
Of subdivisions and postmodern pranks
The fun we had at the treehouse jingoism
The subversion is all around my wretched watch.

November 19, 2024

editors note: A mess to manage what’s within, let alone without. – mh clay

MOTEL ROOM #13 by Roger G. Singer

the key turned
to the right
the door knob
to the left

a strong aroma
walked slowly
out the door
of the unkept room

shattered sunlight
coursed through
a torn curtain

the only window
bandaged with
black duct tape

the bed unmade
a chair overturned
dots of squashed
flies on the wall
beside a bathroom
without a door

November 18, 2024

editors note: Memories molder in that musk or, mayhem manifests next. – mh clay

Pirate by Desmene M. Statum

Spying for treasure
we catch
a half sideways
half backward
glance
the protagonist
trudges aloofly
towards a dim alley
New Year’s Eve
New Orleans
He’s thinking of her
and sends a photograph of
scrawling cursive letters,
a drink menu
with deliciously
witty names
appealing
to their shared
love of literature
and of her laments, how
Hemingway
has already been
everywhere
she wished
she could go.
To her,
in a seemingly small
insignificant way,
this exchange
was as close to
going with him
as she could get.
Oh,
how she longed
to sip
small deaths
with him
all afternoon.

November 17, 2024

editors note: Many small ones, thanks. You can keep the big one. – mh clay

••• Short Stories •••

Take a trip on back to simpler days with Contributing Writer & Poet Jeff Grimshaw‘s rockin’ scene, “Todd Rundgren’s Nostrils: A Tragedy in 3 Scenes (1972)“

Here’s what Short Story Editor Tyler Malone has to say about this read’o the weekend:

Take to the streets, there’s music out there. Some if it, though, you gotta hear it enough to know it’s not worth your lifetimes.

Here’s a few beats to pick up the melody:

Beginning or End? by Tyler Malone

Scene 1: On the Bus (The # 4)

MITCH and ROBIN seated next to each other. Across the aisle, and slightly further back: two girls, BABS and HILLARY listening. ROBIN is perusing the issue of Crawdaddy and showing something in it to MITCH.

MITCH: What am I looking at?

ROBIN points to something on the page.

MITCH: Ah. I’m not a big Todd Rundgren fan. Weird photo, tho. Up the nostrils.

ROBIN: The photographer must be lying on the ground.

MITCH: Yeah. But I give shit one about Rundgren’s nose hairs, man.

ROBIN: Rundgren is only the rationale for the picture. Check out the girl he’s talking to…

Dig the whole tune right here!

•••••••

If you’re lookin’ for a tale of retribution, “Hustle Culture Reprise: Just Us, Not Like Us: Screwdriver“ by Contributing Writer & Poet Joey Da’rrell Cloudy might be the read you need!

Here’s what Short Story Editor Tyler Malone has to say about this read’o the weekday:

Are we killing it or are we killing it?! Let’s ask those in our wake? Those who look like bodies, not people with names.

Here’s set-up to get you started:

A Ride @ Rest by Tyler Malone

My brother is a good man. Sybil said, sitting behind the passenger’s seat of the stolen car as she examined her cellphone. Dominick put the car in park in front of the small house in the center of Inglewood. She fumbled with the back of the phone case as she spoke. “It’s stuck; can I use that screwdriver?” Dominick pulled the flat-head screwdriver from the hotwired car’s ignition and passed it back to the dark-skinned, green-eyed girl with bubblegum-pink Bantu knots in the backseat. She continued to tinker with the phone while talking.

“Even after I found out you attempted to rob my family, I was willing to let you go. After all, if my brother and my grandfather can forgive you, I have no choice but to do as they ask.” She sighed, resigned, as Dominick, Vincent, and Marvin sat in the parked car, confusion growing as she continued. “I admit that I was prepared to let you all go unmolested until I found DNA matches in the files of seven sexual assaults of minors over the last three years.”

Sybil put her lavender bedazzled phone away. “I’m what you would call a bit of a hacker,” she said with a toothy grin. “Two out of the three of you are a 99.7 percent match to the evidence gathered at the ICU of the hospitals where the children were treated after you two attacked them. I promised my brother I would make sure you all arrived home alive.”…

Commence with the comeuppance right here!