Creative thinking inspires ideas. Ideas inspire change.

Barbara Januszkiewicz

••• The Mad Gallery •••

“ER Visit” by Anne Anthony

Mad Swirl is welcoming a new face to the Mad Gallery, with a collection of pieces that turn the every day into something a little bit eerie, trippy, and otherworldly. Anne Anthony’s work seems to twist reality — it’s like stepping into a sci-fi dream you can’t quite wake up from. There’s a perfect mix of beauty and unease in her work, and each image feels like a glitch in the universe — otherworldly yet familiar. If you love art that makes you question what’s real (we sure do!), Anne Anthony is certainly one to watch. ~ Madelyn Olson

To see all of Anne’s eerily, trippy, and otherworldly works, as well as our other resident artists, visit our Mad Gallery!

••• The Poetry Forum •••

This last week on Mad Swirl’s Poetry Forum… we dug ourselves whole while standing in a hole; we found a love actuary, just tired of February; we made amends with beginnings and ends; we suffered production cutbacks to secure an awesome soundtrack; we kindled one more in the passage of war; we purity found from higher ground; we heard from a raver and so-called saviour; we rendered shameless a man made nameless. We’re aptly enthralled to give names to them all. ~ MH Clay

The Manuel Scavenger, Unnamed for shame by David Susswein

Hi! my name is ***** *****
I live in a slum around Delhi,
Here is my wife! and my single child!
When I look at her, my mouth stops working.
Either of them. My eyes, too.

my home is ok, I have four walls and a roof,
the rats are okay, I’ve actually entered into a negotiation with them

they no longer bother my child much

and anyway, when I come home from work,
they rather like my smell. Obviously my wife and child don’t.
But that’s life, isn’t it!

Well! You know, I’m sure you must! what work can be found
has to be work that can be found.

I’m a manual scavenger. I get told I’ve a bit of business to deal with,
then I go.

I have specific clothes to do my job. a little jean I picked up from the street.
well, nothing else. I tend to be mostly naked.
my skin is easier to clean from the stench, than clothes I would buy again.
Not that I could buy clothes again!

Anyway.
Here I Go.

Mhmmmm. A sewer. Stuffed full of unpleasantness.
Its seven feet of human shit, seven feet high.

Still. I wear my second-hand jeans and my naked skin,
what could be bad?

I dive in. Also – sorry – I didn’t tell you, I have a shovel for the shit.

Right in it / yes it’s unpleasant / yes I’m up to my neck / in stools, but also water! that thins it / but yes blood, tampons, and fat from foods, that congealed with it all / yes, also the insects and parasites they live here. Happy as clams. Sometimes you cannot even see, the happy flies, and if there is a bit of mangled human corpse, someone had unsuccessfully flushed, then the maggot train. Endless and Extraordinary in their number.

Still! I have a shovel.
And my shovel is fantastic.

I’m superhuman with my shovel.
I come out from that hole.
Excellent, I get paid, my family can live/

I have never known why the shit-sludge conjures itself into a thick black swamp?

I have prayed to deities
and sometimes I have stopped.

But either way,
I find myself in a shit-sewer, covered in shit.
For my family.

That’s Life!

February 22, 2025

editors note: Would you? Someone will, who must. – mh clay

SOI DISANT SAVIOUR by Amita Sarjit Ahluwalia

When the earth has no more space for graves
And the azure oceans are incarnadined with human blood
I can stop the apocalypse
It’s just that I do not want to play God
(I do, of course, but I cannot admit it)
Listen to me, welcome to my audience,
I shall redeem humankind within seven days
I have ropes and ladders for everyone to climb into heaven
The abject suffering of those who live on earth shall be transformed
into the endless joys of the gardens of the skiey world of gods and angels

So weave a circle round me thrice
Beyond the dreams of avarice
Faster than race of men and mice

O what a set of utter lies
and claims and dreams
and messed-up memes
some sell, most buy!

That was the scream which rent my dream
As dawn turned into darkest night
And all the purple bats took flight
And crows circled a steeple
O People! My People!

February 21, 2025

editors note: A so-called god’s play on god. Believe it! – mh clay

On Higher Ground by Guest Poet RW Rushing

Kid, tomorrow is not promised.
Life is merely – a breath.
You live your life to breathe and only you can decide
What to do with each breath.
So each hour you and you alone
Make 360 big decisions – 360 breaths –
What to do with this mighty, mighty power –
To breathe.

You can call a king.
You can crown a king,
You can become a king,
You can crown yourself king,
Emperor,…God.
You can choose to have it all,
Then throw it all away,
Then have it all again,
As restless as the foaming rollers
Crashing onto King Canute’s Beach.

Yes, but what does it really satisfy?
As for me and mine,
We will follow the footsteps of the Beggar King,
And make straight the paths
Of the God who created the game
And we invite you to follow us
Uphill, towards that some day
Happy Tomorrow,

Up there, where the blue skies and the green earth
Hold each other
Close –
Up there where a high white peak
Covered in snow
Holds in stone all tomorrow’s rivers –
Up there where the purity of the air is the
Purity of the heart, is the purity of the will to do one thing
And that one thing is:

To finally see your own face clearly
And to know yourself
For the first time.
Because only if you know yourself
Can you finally see a way clear to a promised tomorrow,
A promised land.
And I pray we meet up there-
On higher ground.

February 20, 2025

editors note: May our Happy Tomorrow be there, king or not. – mh clay

Military Maneuvers by Mark Young

No ice on the water, not
yet cold enough for that.
So, perhaps it’s CGI, or a
rolled-out simulacrum,
blue-tinged, as if the light

is reflecting off something
solid. The animals crossed
first, horses & ostriches, then
the tanks & troop carriers.
Scribes recorded the pass-

ages of passage, read back
what they had written, &
then they crossed as well.
Providing a verbal sense of
armies on the move, but

with little seismic evidence.
Later, as night fell, an old
man in a dog cart full of
kindling forded the stream.
It was then the earth shook.

February 19, 2025

editors note: How one’s quiet battle can make a war. – mh clay

In Sequence by J. K. Durick

The last day of something leads to
The first day of something else.
We’re stuck here in the sequence
Somewhere between last and first.
Our lives unwind like this – endless
Beginnings and endings to deal with.
We’re at this intersection, waiting for
The light to change, red to green, then
Dawn to dusk, spotlight to nightlight.
Nothing remains, stays as we like it.
It begins, it ends, and we ride along
In the midst of it, heading into the next.
This constant end and beginning, always
Flowing on, floating along, flushing us
Away into the plumbing of our lives
Without an on/off switch to save us from
It. Today I’m ending and beginning, looking
Both ways, like Janus, so much behind me
And a lot less in front of me. It works like
This until the last day is my last day and
There’s nothing just beginning.

February 18, 2025

editors note: If we end enough beginnings, we can finally begin to end… I think? – mh clay

straight to streaming by Guest Poet Karl Koweski

I’ve signed on to star in
the final act of my life.
to be honest, it’s felt as though
the entirety of my existence
has been a succession
of final acts.

still, after years in turnaround,
it’s a satisfying sensation to
escape development hell and
finally be given the green light.

of course, I’ve had to take a pay cut
to stay on, but I’ve accepted
this debasement, preferable
as it is to a recast.

I’m assured it’s going to be
a small scale affair, fit
for an independent feature.
the script has gone through
a series of intensive rewrites.
yet it remains a character study
in search of a proper climax.

sadly, the special effects budget
has been slashed to nothing
necessitating a marked lack
of violence and gratuitous nudity,
and not one fucking explosion
according to my production notes.

but of this one thing I am certain,
the whole show is going to
play out to a Nick Cave/
Warren Ellis soundtrack.

February 18, 2025

editors note: We make sacrifices for (somebody’s) artistic integrity. – mh clay

Likewise by Isaiah Vianese

At dinner, Kyle says,
“Love is a spectrum,”
and I imagine a colorful string
drawing lines between all of us,
friend to friend to lover to friend.
Lately, I daydream
about jogging in warm air,
the song that croons,
“We’re all just chasing the sun.”
I’ve been lonely—even in rooms
full of people I care about.
Perhaps I’ve had too much February.
And what of love?
Well, let me tell you about my favorite
word in ASL. To sign “likewise,”
open your dominant hand
like a fan catching the light.
Then, point your thumb at yourself
and your pinky at a friend.
Fold your middle fingers
to hold that rainbowed line
Kyle was talking about.
Move your hand back and forth
along the string connecting you.
To me, this says we are linked.
It says, dear friend, here
is our common ground.
And you look up
to see his beautiful face, smiling.

February 17, 2025

editors note: Too much February? Looking for less lonely? “Likewise.” – mh clay

On digging your way out. by Guest Poet James “Bear” Rodehaver

Every few minutes, someone dreams
of a better easier world, instead of one
where the digging out must be done—
where the cold-sweated shovel splinters
in calloused hands,
or rests motionless on the ground.

They say, “Just keep digging your way out.”
They say, “Push the shovel through the stony soil.”
They say, “Don’t think so much, just do it.”

Every few minutes, somebody’s got just enough energy and breath to say “Enough.”
Then it’s quiet. Then there is rest.

Seeds of hope, too tiny to see,
are piled up in the dirt,
waiting to be germinated by sweat and movement.
From them sprout the hardiest wildflowers,
each one barbed,
a hard little fistful of defiant bloom
bursting up from the rubble
with a spiny whisper,
silently struggling through the darkness
against all that intolerable weight overhead, enough darkness and weight to seem hopeless.

Every few minutes, some say, “What’s the point?”
“Who will come to dig you out?”
“Do you have any idea how bad it is out there?”

But for every sigh of bent backs and broken wills, for every outcry of despair or defeated shrug,
someone heaves up the pickaxe and shovel,
someone else with a dirty face cracks a smirk,
someone tugs a thorny blossom of hope
from the earth, and hands it to a friend.

February 16, 2025

editors note: It’s best to keep that shovel movin’. – mh clay

••• Short Stories •••

This weekend’s featured read, “God Is Dead and I’m in Limbo Now“ is by Contributing Writer Ethan Goffman.

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

Here we are, living and dying all at once. But where are we now?

Here’s a sneak peek into how God died:

“The Thief” by Tyler Malone

“I killed God,” said the mad man, “and left the universe to wander on its own.”

That made sense. The whole planet had been getting more chaotic. My own life had fallen apart. My wife had suffered and died of cancer. Our only child had been killed by an SUV backing up out of a huge, leafy driveway. I had lost my job and wandered the streets intermittently. I had started drinking again after a 20-year abstinence. Fortunately, my credit was still good and I could afford to spend wildly for a few more months…

Check out the rest of this read here.

•••

If you’re looking for a monstrous kinda story, “GARGANTUA“ by Guest Writer David Fewster is big enough to fill the bill!

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

We never know what we’ll grow into until we go. There are secrets in straight lines.

Here’s a bit of this ginormous tale to get you growin’:

“Secret Shape” by Tyler Malone

Gargantua was the size of 27½ file clerks. This was not as impressive as it sounds, but it was still impressive. She spent not enough time in a partially-enclosed cubicle that had been specially built around her bulk. The sound of her breathing reverberated through the offices, forcing the smaller-scale gargantuas she liked to hire as underlings to take their own breaths according to her rhythm. It was hard to believe that when she was 24 she weighed 140 pounds.

Sometime after that, Gargantua felt impelled to grow. When she contained the mass of 15 file clerks, she decided to have a child. She chose Stan, a short accounting assistant with a hangdog air, to be her breeding partner. Stan was a heroin addict, and somehow they understood each other.

Because it was to be a special moment, Gargantua wanted a change of scenery. Picking up Stan early Saturday morning, she drove to Port Angeles, where they would do the thing in the open air, by the water. Stan had already been given a gram in advance, with a promise for 2 more after finishing…

Get the rest of this tremendous story right here.