Enjoy this poem by Annie Neugebauer from the anthology Do Not Go Quietly.
He moves on, thickset and gruff, his body like his temper; short, built on a grand scale. Unfazed by the smell, he pulls aside pieces of tape as if they’re cobwebs, and steps inside the shattered entrance. This place is a miserable hole, airless, corridors thin as choked arteries and black with the greasy soot of living. Stark resists the impulse to fend his way through. He doesn’t like the uncontrollable sense of urgency, the copper tang of remembered fear these conditions spark, memories of a personal history he’s worked hard to disown.
Sleepy was a dreamer. He closed his eyes and imagined wide-open spaces, the feel of grass beneath his feet, and a small place to call his home. He dreamed of a short walk to an ocean beach, not that he’d ever even left the city, but he’d seen pictures and guessed at the smell of salt air, which would fill his nostrils. A cool drink in one hand, he’d watch pretty women stroll by in all manner of bikinis (he’d heard tell of the immodest fashions of Albion, especially along the French Riviera). Most of all, he dreamed of the sun. A bright, incandescent ball he couldn’t quite focus on, set against the clearest of blue skies, in whose warm light he’d soak in every bit.
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I enjoy reading with musical accompaniment. I do this more with books, but a list of short fiction provides even more excitement, because I get to pick a song per story.
The season’s last match brings with it a press of audience, the mass and noise of them audible even in the preparation vestibule where silence is meant to be the final word. There’s nothing for it, Nuawa supposes, as she tightens the seals on her armor and checks her gun one last time. Everything is oiled, ready.
Your stories are yours to tell. It doesn’t matter if you’re not yet an accomplished writer. In the beginning it doesn’t even matter if you haven’t yet been able to complete anything. Nobody else can tell your stories. If you want them to be told, it’s up to you to find a way to do so, and to develop the best technique you can in order to tell them well.
On the evening of August 12, 2002, a fire raged on the outskirts of Morganville, North Carolina. Into the early hours of the morning it raged, higher and higher, as if the flames fought to devour the moon itself along with everything else. Because of the Morganville Daily Register, the tragedy of that night would come to be known as “The Great Fire of ‘02,” and its casualties would haunt the citizens of Morganville for the rest of their lives.
