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Threnody.

December 28, 2014 by Exangel

by Robert Markland Smith.

You walk down a country road, on a windy fall day; the leaves are circling around you, blown about by the augur of winter. You approach the gate of the abandoned garden where the corpses lie. Your hair is blowing in the wind, whipped around by every gust. You stick your hands deep into your coat pockets, just to keep your fingers warm. The fence surrounding the cemetery is dilapidated and dangling from loose nails. Some of the pickets lean on others, and there is a spirit of desolation all around you.

You enter the garden, walking through piles of dead leaves, which are brown and crackling under your feet. You make out the grey and brown scenery, despite the decay and disrepair of the tombstones lined up in death rows. Some of the crosses are no longer standing. And there are not only crosses here: there are monuments for people of other faiths. Winds of change blow in your cold face, announcing another season.

There are inscriptions on the tombstones, bearing the names of the dead buried under the frosty ground. Look, here is Dan Slote, who died a few years ago: you knew him in the eighties. He tried to help you along with your writing. And as you recognize his name, which is partly erased by time, you get a cramp in your chest. The tombstones here are not elaborate; they are wooden tombstones, undescript, and plain. You would think there would be a monument here.

And here is another name you recognize, Julia Shreck, who came to an untimely end when she was in her mid-thirties. You knew her. She had such an unhappy life, and the only time you remember seeing her look joyful was when she was pregnant for Joshua Zoltan, her only son. You look up at the horizon, beyond the cemetery fence, and the setting sun is struggling to peek out through the grey, dishevelled clouds.

You walk along the rows, searching for other names you recognize. The upkeep of this holy place has been neglected. Look, here is Peter Brawley, with dates. You knew him as well; he died of a heart attack at age sixty-one. The inscription on his monument has also been partly erased over the past few years since he went into the beyond.

There are family members, whom you treasured: your mother, and your cousins Paul and Marjorie. Many of the tombstones have fallen.

You stuff your frostbitten hands deeper into your pockets. The wind howls from a distance. There is one lone dead tree just outside the garden. And you can hear the lonely wind rustling through the remaining leaves and the creaking of the branches, like the masts of a sailboat carrying the dead to another shore.

Really, it is too cold, and you walk back out of this morbid garden. You shuffle along the country road, back to the village, where the living are staying warm.

You can remember the dead, you can even talk to them, but the only response is the wind rushing past you, into the emptiness.

 

 

Filed Under: EAP: The Magazine, Winter 2015: Firsts.

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In This Issue.

  • Who Was Dorothy?
  • Those Evil Spirits.
  • The Screaming Baboon.
  • Her.
  • A Tale of Persistence.
  • A Conversation with Steve Hugh Westenra.
  • Person Number Twelve.
  • Dream Shapes.
  • Cannon Beach.
  • The Muse.
  • Spring.
  • The Greatness that was Greece.
  • 1966, NYC; nothing like it.
  • Sun Shower.
  • The Withering Weight of Being Perceived.
  • Broken Clock.
  • Confession.
  • Francis Coppola’s Apocalypse.
  • Sometimes you die, I mean that people do.
  • True (from “My Life with Dogs”).
  • Fragmentary musings on birds and bees.
  • 12 Baking Essentials to Always Have in Your Poetry.
  • Broad Street.
  • A Death in Alexandria.
  • My Forked Tongue.
  • Swan Lake.
  • Long Division.
  • Singing against the muses.
  • Aphorisms from “What Remains to Be Said”.

In The News.

That cult classic pirate/sci fi mash up GREENBEARD, by Richard James Bentley, is now a rollicking audiobook, available from Audible.com. Narrated and acted by Colby Elliott of Last Word Audio, you’ll be overwhelmed by the riches and hilarity within.

“Captain Sylvestre de Greybagges is your typical seventeenth-century Cambridge-educated lawyer turned Caribbean pirate, as comfortable debating the virtues of William Shakespeare, Isaac Newton, and compound interest as he is wielding a cutlass, needling archrival Henry Morgan, and parsing rum-soaked gossip for his next target. When a pepper monger’s loose tongue lets out a rumor about a fleet loaded with silver, the Captain sets sail only to find himself in a close encounter of a very different kind.

After escaping with his sanity barely intact and his beard transformed an alarming bright green, Greybagges rallies The Ark de Triomphe crew for a revenge-fueled, thrill-a-minute adventure to the ends of the earth and beyond.

This frolicsome tale of skullduggery, jiggery-pokery, and chicanery upon Ye High Seas is brimming with hilarious puns, masterful historical allusions, and nonstop literary hijinks. Including sly references to Thomas Pynchon, Treasure Island, 1940s cinema, and notable historical figures, this mélange of delights will captivate readers with its rollicking adventure, rich descriptions of food and fashion, and learned asides into scientific, philosophical, and colonial history.”

THE SUPERGIRLS is back, revised and updated!

supergirls-take-1

In The News.

Newport Public Library hosted a three part Zoom series on Visionary Fiction, led by Tod.  

And we love them for it, too.

The first discussion was a lively blast. You can watch it here. The second, Looking Back to Look Forward can be seen here.

The third was the best of all. Visions of the Future, with a cast of characters including poets, audiobook artists, historians, Starhawk, and Mary Shelley. Among others. Link is here.

In the News.

SNOTTY SAVES THE DAY is now an audiobook, narrated by Last Word Audio’s mellifluous Colby Elliott. It launched May 10th, but for a limited time, you can listen for free with an Audible trial membership. So what are you waiting for? Start listening to the wonders of how Arcadia was born from the worst section of the worst neighborhood in the worst empire of all the worlds since the universe began.

In The News.

If you love audio books, don’t miss the new release of REPORT TO MEGALOPOLIS, by Tod Davies, narrated by Colby Elliott of Last Word Audio. The tortured Aspern Grayling tries to rise above the truth of his own story, fighting with reality every step of the way, and Colby’s voice is the perfect match for our modern day Dr. Frankenstein.

In The News.

Mike Madrid dishes on Miss Fury to the BBC . . .

Tod on the Importance of Visionary Fiction

Check out this video of “Beyond Utopia: The Importance of Fantasy,” Tod’s recent talk at the tenth World-Ecology Research Network Conference, June 2019, in San Francisco. She covers everything from Wind in the Willows to the work of Kim Stanley Robinson, with a look at The History of Arcadia along the way. As usual, she’s going on about how visionary fiction has an important place in the formation of a world we want and need to have.

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