All was not well in fairyland

We are now well into spring and nearly everything has been planted out; though tomatoes and winter squash still have yet to be put in. We haven’t had too much rain which is good for getting things into the ground and bad for seedling that have already been planted. Hopefully it will come with some regularity in the coming months but that’s like asking a bee to fly in a straight line so it’s best not to think about it too much.

And the days are long and the sun is hot and I’m in so much debt and by the time I get home I just don’t have the energy to sit down and pump out 500 words. I don’t know if this will change when the work schedule will have the regularity of harvesting and weeding and less planting. I hope it will. The other interns are great but they are bringing up some issues I have already dealt with and assumed to be a normal part of life here at Red Goose Gardens.

I’ve called the farm Fariyland on more than one occasion. Life here seems so unreal and so different from college or life in Lakeville. The work is hard and tasks can seem insurmountable. But watching seedlings growing in bushes so large and full of fruit can see like magic. The gods bless us with so much summer squash we are literally brought to our knees in their service every day for a good six weeks. An agrarian lifestyle is much like a fairy tale for a suburban kid and though I have lived and worked on this farm for three years now, the abundance of good things the earth gives us still captures my imagination. Maybe fairies really are living in that space off woods between county road 3 and the land in which we work.

So here I am. The world is different this year. It’s not all bad. There are new problems to deal with. I will do my best to try and keep writing. This is a time of transition. Spring is becoming summer. I have new roles and responsibilities on the farm. I’m trying to figure out what kind of adult I am going to be. I am no longer a college student but still feel like I am.

All is not well in Fairyland but even in the most confusing times I still have my friends, the chickens, the growing vegetation, and maybe a fairy or two.

A Forest of Courage in print... or so to speak et alt

My new piece, A Forest of Courage, is featured in the May 2012 edition of With Painted Words. It's short, less an 1,000 words, so check it out. With Painted Words was the first magazine to publish my work and I am so grateful to them for choosing another of my short stories. Support them and their contributors and supports (i.e. Pill Hill Press i.e. the people who published my story The Illumination of Queen Bees) with moneys or words of encouragement.  

P.S. BUGS! (the anthology where you may find The Illumination of Queen Bees) I've been told will be available for kindle/nook/e-readers someday. I thought that it would be available soon after its release but that seems not to be the case. If you don't want to buy a hard copy, you can help all of us contributors by easily clicking on the "Tell the Publisher" button on this page.

P.S.S. It is summer once again and I be working hard at Red Goose Gardens. This also means I will be updating the blog more often then... never... which has been the trend. So add me to your RSS feed. I'll be posting short segments of thing I will be submitting, the little bits of imaginative non-sense that form during my long hours in the fields, and general updates on what's going on I my life.  Check back often for a little bit of everything.

It's Not About Robins

The hawks are happy today

they open their wings to encompass the sky
shifting so I see all their brown feathers,
spread to grasp every warm updraft
they create a tunnel in this spring air

I am happy today
to see them spin in
wide white circles
To know they spin up
to bring the warmth out of the earth
and twist down to drawn down the sun
their catabasis is what renews me today

But I wonder, as I sit in my car
will they climb higher
dare the sun in his sky
and come together
Will they clasp their claws
extend their legs towards one another
And tumble earthwards
Will they spin into one form
of feathers, talons and sun
Will they risk each other’s life
in the decent
Will the earth be soft and kind
if both are unwilling to separate.

For now they will turn
in a column of their own creation
Please bring back the spring
with the sun and earth.

Full Moon Visage

You can’t see her face.
     No not really.
She will look right at you
     and not through.
Her gaze’s wide and white as the moon,
     with pulps black as space.
You are not permitted to see the entirety of her.
     No, not ever.

But then you can’t see the back of her head.
And how she does her hair.
Is it a tight bun rolled like perfect dinner rolls?
Or is it woven in a French braid,
the stands held together by precise handicraft and spells.
When she lets it hang lose
the curls and threads circumnavigating her face.
What is she telling you?
her mouth forever closed.

Let us conjecture,
the she is merely reflecting your light.
Her iris a rainbow of your psych.
A multi-mythology in a single face.

Look at her.
Wide and white.
Open and black.
Do you hair as she does
     (to the best of your ability)
And hope that one day when you see your face
in the reflecting pool of the future
You see her
your sister, your mother, your friend
all at the same time.

The Queens Final Breath

The Queen was escorted to the brood hives to lay her final egg. Into this prefect and golden hexagon she poured all her royal jelly. For the next six days, she sat besides the future queen and retold the whole of her life. She pushed the story of herself and her reign though the royal jelly spiked with scents like delphinium and lavender, clover and buckwheat, apple and rose petals. It was pungent with salt and mead. It was thick and hot like the ant-oil. It was bright like an epiphany.

She poured the entirety of herself into the cell in hopes that her dreams and her drive would penetrate the soft white body of her truest of children. It was as close as she could get to living forever. Bees like bacterium, whales, humans, and snakes want to live forever and so they do whatever they can to become like the gods and goddesses of old, immortal. They tell stories to their young about themselves and their history in hopes that when their body has released the soul that they might continue to work here on earth. Some do it out of fear. Some do it out of a biological urge. Others do it because they want to see their reflection in their child’s bright and immaculate face. Bee’s fall somewhere in between this triangle of self preservation. Death to a Queen is her final act and she will never again get to the chance to send a chemical message or dance a command in which to enact her will and there for fears insufficient amounts of nectar will be collected. She feels a compulsion to work, being a creature of engineering and industry and hopes her queendom will not fall into rune when her body becomes nothing more than a chitin shell  on the forest floor. In the shining pool of jelly she sees her mirroring eyes and her child all at the same time. And with a final breath like prayer to the new queen, she exhales and the humming of her engine heart halts like the grinding of rusted gears.

Animalistic Attributes

The kingdom of animalia contains a great multitude of creatures, all whom reflect the virtues and evils of the human experience. Take the lion for example. See how his pelt reflects the prefect golden rays of the sun. Her roar is like that of dictator’s demands and it will not be denied. Therefore lions have the adoration of nobility and those who take pride in simplicity of being alive. Or take the swallow family (Hirundinidae) who are all attributed the principles of physics. The common barn swallow reflects velocity and the Black Saw-Wing for speed. The Wire-Tailed Swallow with its tail like two needles holds bilateral direction in its iconography; the Sand Martin is the embodiment of acceleration. The only exception to this universal rule is the Purple Martin, who did not care much for the science. On the day the Purple Martin was created, she chose to be the patron saint to those who live in tenements, a omen to landlords and dukes, and a symbol for vanity for children and first year students in any discipline. 

But what of the insects who scudded across the sea floor and methodically climb up trees or burro into the soil? Do all moths and wasps and ladybugs bless the professions of pilots or aeronauts? Of course bugs and all thing things that creep towards your bare feet in long summer days are no different from the lions or swallows or three-toed sloths  who obviously rules over the lazy but also patronage the world of fungi, chefs, and farmers in winter to a lesser degree. 

So why should you believe me that the creatures of the air, the earth, and the sea are connected to deeds and behaviors of us highly evolved and complex beings. Plainly said, you shouldn’t. But know this; Should you look at a monarch butterfly and see nothing more than orange and black pulsing against the blue sky, then I shall tip my straw hat in your general direction and wish you a good lunch and a productive afternoon. But realize that you have been blessed by this insect with its powers of endurance, its Capricornian nature, and that report due at 3:00PM will get done forty-four minutes sooner than if you had not caught mosaic wings out of the corner of your hazel eyes. You see but this is one example of how our friends with six legs and segmented bodies help us even though they will infiltrate our sugar jars and make nest below the eves at times.

PUBLISHED

YES! IT HAS FINALLY HAPPENED. I’m pretty sure my fourteen-year-old self is in tears. I haven’t been submitting hard core like so many other others but in a relatively short amount of time, I have achieved the status of PUBLISHED AUTHOR! It feels absolutely fantastic. There has been a shameless promotion in one of my classes which of course was embarrassing (Cheers to you, Carly). Literally started crying last night and had to rained it in (there was a little celebration with red wine of course).

Of Agrarian Advice is published in With Painted Words which is an online literary magazine. The premise is actually pretty frickin awesome. “Simply put this is a creative writing site that puts the adage, "a picture paints a thousand words" to the test. The premise is that, each month, an image will be given as a visual prompt and you will have up to one thousand words to tell the story that you are inspired to write ... using your imagination as the canvas and language as your brush.” They publish micro fiction (250-500 words), flash fiction (500 to 1,000 words) and poetry.

I feel so privileged and so much thanks go out to all those at With Painted Words. I hope the magazine increases in popularity and you continue to take chances on unpublished authors.

*The picture is from the October issue of With Painted Words and is the inspiration for all stories (and a poem) in the magazine. The artist is Chris Howard.