The Woven Tale Press Vol. III #4 by The Woven Tale Press

Hand of Fate

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The Woven Tale Press

Vol.III #4

EDITOR-IN-CHIEF: Sandra Tyler Author of Blue Glass, a New York Times Notable Book of the Year, and After Lydia, both published by Harcourt Brace; awarded BA from Amherst College and MFA in Writing from Columbia University; professor of creative writing on both the undergraduate and graduate levels, including at Columbia University, (NY), Wesleyan University (CT), and Manhattanvill College, (NY); served as assistant editor at Ploughshares and The Paris Review literary magazines, and production freelancer for Glamour, Self, and Vogue magazines; freelance editor; Stony Brook University’s national annual fiction contest judge; a 2013 BlogHer.com Voices of the Year. http://www.awriterweavesatale.com

ASSOCIATE EDITOR: Michael Dickel, Ph.D. A poet, fiction writer, essayist, photographer and digital artist, Dr. Dickel holds degrees in psychology, creative writing, and English literature. He has taught college, university writing and literature courses for nearly 25 years; served as the director of the Student Writing Center at the University of Minnesota and the Macalester Academic Excellence Center at Macalester College (St. Paul, MN). He co-edited Voices Israel Volume 36 (2010). His work has appeared in literary journals, anthologies, art books, and online for over 20 years, including in:THIS Literary Magazine, Eclectic Flash, Cartier Review, Pirene’s Fountain, Sketchbook, Emerging Visions Visionary Art eZine, and Poetry Midwest. His latest book of poems is Midwest / Mid-East: March 2012 Poetry Tour. http://michaeldickel.info

The Woven Tale Press is a monthly culling of the creative web, exhibiting the artful and innovative. Enjoy here an eclectic mix of the literary, visual arts, photography, humorous, and offbeat. The Woven Tale Press mission is to grow Web traffic to noteworthy writers and artists–contributors are credited with interactive Urls. Click on an Url to learn more about a contributor. If there is a “Featured!” button, it will link you back to a special feature on The Woven Tale Press site. To submit go to: http://thewoventalepress.net

ARTS EDITORS: Seth Apter Mixed-media artist, instructor, author and designer. His artwork has been widely exhibited, and represented in numerous books, independent zines, and national magazines. He is the voice behind The Pulse, a series of international, collaborative projects, the basis of his two books The Pulse of Mixed Media: Secrets and Passions of 100 Artists Revealed and The Mixed-Media Artist: Art Tips, Tricks, Secrets and Dreams From Over 40 Amazing Artists, both published by North Light Books. He is the artist behind two workshop DVDs: Easy Mixed Media Surface Techniques and Easy Mixed Media Techniques for the Art Journal. http://www.sethapter.com Donald Kolberg: Sculptor, painter, art marketer and writer. His artwork has been exhibited throughout the U.S. in museums and galleries with his current representation at the Parker Art Gallery in St. Simons, Ga. He has been featured in an NBC short documentary and numerous print and zine publications. He is founder of ArtCore an international newsletter, and continues to be active in art groups presenting classes on marketing and art techniques including workshops on creating Strappo’s, a dry transfer acrylic monotype. A graduate of California State University, Los Angeles, his master work was continued at Otis Art Institute. Additionally he produced Periscope Up an independent television production for a Pennsylvania PBS station. His artwork has been included in the publication ‘Sculpture and Design with Recycled Glass’. Additional artwork and information can be viewed at www.DonaldKolberg.com PHOTOGRAPHY EDITOR: Susan Tuttle: Award winning iPhoneographer and DSLR photographer. She is the author of three instruction-based books (published in the US and abroad by F+W Media, North Light Books) on digital art with Photoshop, mobile photography and DSLR photography, and mixed-media art. Her fourth book, Art of Everyday Photography: Move Toward Manual and Make Creative Photos (about DSLR photography and mobile photography) was recently released by North Light Books and has been a best-seller in its category on Amazon. She is currently the Technical Advisor for Somerset Digital Studio Magazine. http://susantuttlephotography.com

FLASH FICTION EDITOR: T.K. Young: US-based writer; author of the flash fiction collection When We’re Afraid, and currently finalizing the upcoming “pre-dystopian” science fiction novel Chawlgirl Rising for publication. He posts original work, writing tips, news and contests at www.flashfictionblog.com. CONTRIBUTING EDITOR: FICTION: Kelly Garriott Waite Her work has appeared in The Globe and Mail, The Philadelphia Inquirer, The Christian Science Monitor, Thunderbird Stories Project, Volume One, Valley Living, The Center for a New American Dream and in the on-line magazine, Tales From a Small Planet. Her fiction has been published in The Rose and Thorn Journal (Memory, Misplaced), in Front Row Lit (The Fullness of the Moon) and in Idea Gems Magazine (No Map and No Directions). Her works in progress have been included in the Third Sunday Blog Carnival: The Contours of a Man’s Heart and Wheezy Hart. She is the ASSISTANT EDITORS: Dyane Forde Author of forthcoming Rise of the Papilion Trilogy: The Purple Morrow (Book 1) http://droppedpebbles.wordpress.com Lisa A. Kramer, Ph.D Freelance writer, editor, theatre director, and arts educator. She has published non-fiction articles in theater journals, as well articles aimed at young people for Listen Magazine. Her fiction is included in Theme-Thology: Invasion published by HDWPBooks. com. She is the director of a writers’ workshop From Stage to Page: Using Creative Dramatics to Inspire Writing. http://www.lisaakramer.com

Our staff is an eclectic mix of editors with keen eyes for the striking. So beware–they may be culling your own site for those gems deserving to be unearthed and spotlit in The Woven Tale Press.

http://dbwaterman.weebly.com

Mixed media:

Worlds Apart

Partly paper, m

collage, partly paintings: canvas, magazine, acrylic, pencil, ballpoint, glue

Frozen

Bring It On

No Finish Line

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Day for Night

Looking for Shelter 6

http://www.prateek-mathur.com

And He Ran Like a Man Possessed Miles away from failure A step towards success Yet miles away from reality Like a cruel game of chess With sweat glistening on his forehead He ran like a man possessed His legs trembling His eyes tearful His body numbing He shouted without a voice Ignoring everyone who had gathered around Waiting for him to give up But he had made a choice Looking up Staring the zero in its eye He suddenly sped And ran like a man possessed With his world crumbling before his eyes Only a little was left under control That gave some peaceful moments and hope to his soul Where he could deny descent And aimed for the summits Not for victory but to play the game of grits He challenged himself and pushed his limits Forgetting for a little while, his self-detest And ran like a man possessed With logic outdone by sheer arrogance He reminded himself that he could still be a winner Here he renewed his belligerence

Letting go of all that was repressed He ran , he ran, And he ran like a man possessed

A Dream Lost (1)

I recently lost a dream. It’s strange to lose something that’s psychical in origin, evanescent in existence and meta-physical in interpretation. I was taught that having, preserving and relishing a dream is the way to success. So I dreamt, big. I was made to believe that dreams don’t come true without working hard, so I did. They said patience is the key. So I persevered. My dream to me was the liberation of the spirit from the natural pressures; A buoyant force that freed my soul from the shackles of the matter. And then, I lost it.

(2)

I lost something that had occupied me for as long as I could remember. It had governed my actions and conduct. It was the string that tied all the otherwise inexplicable fragments of my life. My dream was my subconscious giving all that around me, a meaning. With my dream, I lost my subconscious and it took along the people, the places and the relationships it once defined and gave meaning to. Karma, my religion taught me, is the greatest and the fairest justice of all. My dream was my Karma. (3) “Living a dream” is misinterpreted. You can have a dream in your future and your past, but you don’t ever have it in your present. As they say: “Dreams are but sea-foam.” If it were to become your present, or you “realize” a dream, it simply becomes worldly, losing the enigmatic self that elevated it to the levels of being mythical. It becomes your story; your Life. In many ways, I lost my reality.

(4)

A dream is lost when you lose the Desire to sleep at night, as that will mark the end of another day you wished didn’t happen. And a dream is lost when after every such night you still want to wake up in the past. To live such an illusion, you wish that there was no morning, no sunlight and not another new date in this forced chapter of your life. A dream is lost when it takes with it the very Faith that drove you to have that dream in the first place. It’s more than losing confidence, as confidence is merely the reaffirmation of one’s own abilities while Faith is the spiritual stamp of approval to trust and back yourself. When the spiritual is lost, the physical has no meaning. A dream is lost when you steer without Direction. A man can handle setbacks and adversities as long as there is a perceived path ahead. The road ahead might be rough or smooth, bright or dark, easy or difficult, but it’s still a path nevertheless. And a dream is lost when you can’t distinguish between facing a wall or a crossroad. A dream is lost when the Realization sinks in that no matter what the future holds, better or worse, you can still never go back to the status quo you once cherished. And you know that this change is irreversible and what’s lost can’t be replaced or regained. For that matter, you also know that calling it a “change” is undermining the havoc of this apocalypse. (5) When the dust settled, the passersby came to help me gather the pieces. They simply asked me to look ahead and start afresh. Till there is breath in me, there would always be a future, and people would point towards that, telling me to aim for a new and better tomorrow. Life, they say, always finds a way. I find that flawed. What I have lost, and what I might gain, cannot be equated. Balance, is irrelevant to me. Losses redefine the parameters. It’s then the mind accepts dreams as a useless and morbid exercise keeping us afloat for no reason. We start aiming for the low hanging fruits, consoling ourselves consciously, by instancing the past failures. This new definition of success is impudent to your lost dream, but we ignore it, in the name of life. A dream is lost when the only Motivation in life remains to connect every dot to get the same pattern that defined your dream once. Time will pass and people will move on but I would find myself living in the same matrix trying to relive the manifestation of the dream that once was. 9

http://www.baznani.com Moroccan photographer and filmmaker Achraf Baznani carries on the traditions of Surrealism with his wild, imaginative, and wholly impractical imagery. Among his inventive scenarios, small human figuresâ&#x20AC;&#x201D; often the artist himselfâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;appear trapped within glass jars or the size of a camera lens.

Black Birds

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Into the Nest

The Crash

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Ready to Fly 14 14

Paperman

15 15

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Moon

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Slow Death

Caged

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https://about.me/cmoulton The rays of the oncoming sunset twisted and turned across the water. A sharp gleam that mirrored his own life, since that day of waking up, his nose half buried in cocaine – left hand plucking at his personal computer, writing one of the violent crime novels that had made him famous. Violence had raged across the white screen, as Rowena’s slamming doors echoed in his mind. Rowena packing her bags into the car and heading for the highway.

The Truth in the

And as he sat by the lake on this summer’s day, the whole crisis presented itself as a picture dark and richly textured. Of Rowena packing her bags and scooting off in her Porsche. “It’s drugs or me,” she had screamed, tires skidding, the dust behind her car blooming in the breeze, the sun burning on Tom’s skin, his tears hot, the birds the only witnesses to his anguish. He’d run after his wife’s car, missed it, slipped, and landed on the dusty road.

Wate

He’d ended up on his wide porch overlooking Mount Mitchell, bloody, crying, screaming. His nose half into the mirror littered with Columbian magic powder, Tom had collapsed into his expensive Chippendale chair. He’d stared out into the wilderness. He’d sat there for over an hour before making the call, clutching the number to the rehab Rowena had found for him a year earlier. Had the rehab helped? No. Had it brought Rowena back? No. Was he still an alcoholic? Good question. Was he still a drug addict? No idea. It was late summer before he was back from rehab, the house sold, the furniture moved to Florida to a new house, his mother still not notified. And the question, of course, remained: How would he explain this to his mother...and his father? Giving up the house by this lake at Mount Mitchell had never been a choice that he’d wanted to make. It was something that had to be done, especially since Rowena had left. 19 19

The sun was disappearing behind the Appalachian Mountains. The moon’s round shape now appeared on the one side of the mountain, the sun on the other. The queen of the day saying goodbye, the other queen waiting to offer the world a darker and dreamier bliss. Sitting by that lake, Tom was trying to say his own goodbyes. Goodbye to cocaine. Goodbye to a future ex-wife, his interior decorator. “Goodbye, house,” Tom whispered. His own voice seemed foreign. Weird. Somehow funny. As if he didn’t recognize it at all. Tom looked down at the book, this oldest book in his possession, resting in his hand. His fingers travelled up and down the cover, soft textured, the cover he had caressed as a child, the book where he’d written secrets about his school friends locking him into the bathroom, forcing him to take that...stuff. A 16-year-old kid locked into a bathroom, forced to take cocaine. Expelled from school, he left home to work himself through countless odd jobs, living in countless cities, always on the road, finally achieving success, but never acquiring peace. That one page with some information about three guys who had bought some dope from a strange fellow in a crimson red suit, asking Tom to try sniffing that bag. Strange, how at 44 years of age having to start anew, or rather return to his roots; having to return home had seemed evident. To the smell of lilacs, of his mother’s baked apple pie, of a freshly mowed lawn and the sight of Dad’s coin collection. At what point had he actually abandoned his real self? His innocent self? When had the kid who had played in the yard, dressed up as a cowboy, eaten strawberry-flavored ice cream sundaes in the park with his friends, left himself and become the rebel, the druggie, the maniac, the bad boy, who somehow managed a career in spite of the insanity? A famous author, infamous for his outbursts and drug scandals, had found truth in the fact that he had followed a ghost. The ghost of fame. The ghost of cocaine. His nose hairs vanished, his brain a train wreck, and now returning to his family in Florida. Florida. Had he really talked his agent into letting him move back, knowing that he would have to tell his mother that the move was because of his career? If he had only known back then... He could have said no, broken out, saved his life. Would he be famous today? 20 20

Did it matter? Years of fleeing reality actually causes you to meet your mentor. And it had been Rowena, hadn’t it? She had been the catalyst. Good old Rowena who had forced him to send in his manuscripts, to try new creative paths, no matter what his agent said. Good old Rowena, to whom he had promised to stay clean. Who had replaced his parents. And who was now gone, sending him back to his parents without knowing it. Nothing left, but a few dozen bestsellers. “You have to have someone to love,” he muttered to himself, looking out at the Appalachian mountains. “If it ain’t Rowena, it’s gotta be Mom.” The evening sun was almost gone, but Tom saw the truth in that sun setting beyond Mount Mitchell, making him hate nature. The truth in those green trees. The truth in that water. The truth in his own now empty house, sold for over a million dollars to an executive and his family. Tom didn’t burn bridges. He built new ones. But he wanted his old life back. Mom, seventy-five by now, right? God help her, would she forgive him, ever? Dad? Dad. Tom stood up, walking that path back up to the familiar house, a house that he and Rowena had bought fifteen years ago, chasing his luck, refusing to have anything to do with his family. Why? Because they were...what? Twee? Bourgeois? Provincial? Small Town America? Now “Small Town America” was all he needed. Once back on the porch of his sold house, he turned around and faced a sight that had grown so familiar. But the view now of Mount Mitchell seemed new; there was no future staying here without Rowena. 21 21

So Tom Winslow took one last look from his porch, at the path down to the lake, the swing, the garden, the old road toward the mountainside, and picked up his cellular phone, desperate, pushing Rowena’s number, hanging up, stopping, waiting, crying. Tom took one moment in order to decide which woman he had to call: his wife or his mother. Suddenly, beyond all the pain of lost love, he knew who he had to call. He lifted the receiver to his ear and waited for the long tone, that ominous echo of the past, the Appalachian summer sending its heat into his own broken life. Standing there on an expensive porch, waiting for his mother to answer the phone, he could just see the last of the sun’s rays spreading their now weak light across the lake. “Winslow,” a familiar voice answered the phone, this time older and more fragile. A long silence followed the introduction. Tom closed his eyes, trying to feel how he had felt before walking into that damn bathroom and taking that cocaine. Sixteen years old and so damn stupid. “Hello? Is anyone there?” His mother almost hung up on him, when Tom suddenly spoke. “Mom? It’s me.” She didn’t say a word. Until a breath–one small intake of air. “T-Tom?” The haunting voice from his past, one voice that had been a theory for all these years, spoke to him. The voice called him by his name. All those bestsellers on Mom’s shelf, all those friends and relatives asking questions, her son just a picture on a wall. His voice cracked. Fluttered. “It’s me, Mom.” In the background, the old clock in her Florida hallway announced the full hour. “Tom, is that...really you?” The question hung there, like a strange bird floating on an air-pocket. One tear rolled down Tom’s cheek, made its way toward his chin and hung there, a blister of dirty air. “Is it true what they’re saying?” his mother said. “That you are moving back?” So news had travelled fast. “Yes, Mom. I’m still in North Carolina, though.” Tom slumped down on a semi-broken 22 porch chair . “I ... love ... you.” 22

A moment of silence. “You do?” “I miss you,” he said. “Oh, son. Come home.” Memories of a younger woman making tea and inviting lady friends for brunch returned. Memories of a better life came back, guilt knocking on his inner door. “Rowena left me, Mom. She...” His mother gasped. He thought he could hear her fidgeting with her hands. “We’ve sold the house. I’ve been to rehab.” His mother seemed to be waiting. Listening. “Uhm, Mom,” Tom started. “I’m off the...white stuff. Sort of.” “I still don’t know why you ever started taking that stuff, Tommy,” his mother spat. Now that teenager returned. But this time, her remark didn’t spark hatred; the rebel walked away. And Tom felt happy, happy that his mother cared at all, after all that had happened. He was still her son, famous or not, careless or not, mean or not. “But I do read your books, Tom. They’re very violent. We never taught you that.” “They’re on the New York Times Bestseller List, Mom,” he answered. “So what? What good will that do you when you die of an overdose?” Tom laughed, getting up out of that broken chair, opening the door to his now empty house. He walked in, the screen door banging shut behind him. The one thing that he had been longing to say ever since he left his hometown simply slipped out: “My agent wants me to write a novel with Florida as the place of action,” he lied. “My last novel had this one scene in Miami and people have been asking him if there will be more scenes like that. So, he’s...” 23 23

Tom cleared his throat, trying to articulate himself in a fearless way, trying to play the role of the macho star, the role he played whenever he visited Hollywood, the role of the fake Tom. The guy that madly tried to convince his critical mother to believe he was successful and famous. The unruly kid returning home. “Well, Mom, to put it this way: my agent has assured me that if I create a story set in Florida, we can interest a whole lot of producers into making it into a movie,” Tom continued, as an off-the-cuff remark. “They have this idea of me including Orlando and the beaches and I don’t know what. The publisher is a big Florida fan. It’s a long story. I don’t want to bore you with all that. Main thing is that I am clean, free and...I am coming home.” He had now just lied to her. Then pretended not to care. Of course, that project was a definite offer. But that was not the reason why he was moving to Florida. He was moving because he missed his parents. That had only happened after Rowena had left him. Hhis mother started laughing, desperately. It was hard for Tom to say from where that laugh came. Why it came at all. When it did, the river of that happy laugh suddenly grew melancholic, sad and turned into a cry very quickly. “Who am I kidding? I am coming home, because I miss you guys,” he corrected. “It’s been too long now.” “Tom, why did you stay away from us? At all?” The fact was, Tom could’ve taken over his dad’s hardware store. He would have been married to Jessie Palmer now and taking his son Doug to the Junior Prom after having a beer with the boys. “I resented the provincial attitude, thought I was better than you. Mostly, it was my own problem. I will back come to Florida and I won’t leave again. How’s Dad?” Tom wandered around his empty house, one foldable bunk bed reserved for his nightly rest. He stopped in the corner overlooking his station wagon, looking through the living room window at his car, and the road that eventually would take him back to Florida. The setting sun shone its last ray on the front wheel of the Dodge, highlighting the Uniroyal logo on the tire. “Oh, Tom.” The sadness in her voice was as withered as a dying rose. “What? How’s Dad, Mom? Tell me.”

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The scent of the Appalachian summer now smelled sordid. Wrong. Out of place. “Tom...” she said. “Dad is lost his battle against cancer – a good year ago.” The sun had now set completely. The moon had risen, its light shining on the car. A leather bag peeked up from beyond the back seat. In it, Tom’s Pulitzer Prize was dusty, the Oscar silent and neutral. “No.” Tom wept. “Mom, no, no, no, no, no...” “I have wanted to call you. You snapped at us, so badly, in fact, that we just figured you didn’t want to have anything to do with us. So, we left you alone.” In the now dark house, Tom fell down onto his knees. The parquet floor hurt his already wounded, rehabilitated bones. But he lay his head on the floor. Rocking. Closing his eyes. Remembering the bicycle rides with his dad, the Monopoly games Saturday evenings with popcorn and coke. “His last words were that he will be keeping close watch over you from heaven. He never forgot you, Tom.” Tom opened his eyes. The moon came searching for him, casting a pillar or light across the parquet floor. And he was remembering something else now: “Come on, dude,” his soon-to-be band manager in the red jacket had said. “Cocaine rules, man!” Drugs, loud music, the band, running away, life on the road, bad company, good company, Hollywood, regular phone calls, irregular phone calls, fame, scandals, family fights, hatred, jealousy, silence. Boosting success by becoming a published author. This felt like a waking up. Dad. Dead. “Tom?” “Yes?” “Why didn’t you come here to visit us when you bought your new house?” The quiet question made him want to lash out. Not at his mother – at himself. “When we found out, everybody was talking about it.” Her voice became pleading, sad, forgiving. “There are no hard feelings, only ...” 25

His mother’s feeble cry turned into a horrible, hungry and very sad sob. Old emotions returned, old anger at parental demands. “Your father kept asking me why his boy didn’t come back to see him when he was in town. We saw you walking about town.” “I thought you hated me.” “Because of our fight?” “Yes.” “Well, we’re still your parents.” “I am leaving tomorrow.” “The furniture? Your stuff?” “My stuff’s already in Florida.” “Then why stay in North Carolina, Tom?” “Rowena’s gone, Mother.” Old anger rose at his mother’s efforts to control him, but when he thought of how fragile she was now, that wrath disappeared with the rising of the moon. “Mom, I will see you soon.” “Bye, Tom,” she whispered. “It’ll be nice to have you back.” “I love you, Mom,” he said. “Bye.” That night, Tom didn’t go up to the bunk bed, bought for kids that never were born. Tom Winslow, that famous author and ex-cocaine-addict with destroyed nostrils, didn’t even look at the moon as it shone through the window upon his face. He fell asleep on the floor, the phone lying at his ear. The next morning, on waking, Tom saw the parquet floor for what it was. Just a floor. Expensive, okay. Worth a million dollars, okay. But just a floor. He stood up, picked up his phone, walked around the house for one last time. He decided to leave the bunk bed where it was, a kind of reminder that someone else had once lived here. And he never noticed that he’d forgotten his diary, had left it where it lay by the living room window. 26

Watercolors

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Newfoundland

Bray uses watercolor, usually considered a transparent medium, with layers of opaque paint to create unique effects

The Long Road Home

Dollymount

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Donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t Fence Me In 30

Demelza http://jbray3.wix.com/joebray

Alina (Based on a photograph by Peppino Camilli)

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Diane

Andrea

http://www.sonja-benskin-mesher.com needing refreshment in oswestry, later rather than sooner, crept up the chalk painted

.. pickles ..

staircase, seems to work well, in this case. i note the distressed nature of the furniture. this place. having regular coffee, a fruit scone will certainly do, i listen to the server, who clasping the china teapot, tells us revelations of those who live, who divorce and warm the pot. i have to say that the scone was lovely. later i bought a potting bench. 35

Photo by Sonja Benskin

. the little garden . the frost came on the field as the light failed. later it warmed again. it is a small garden, that creates conversation, hints at a deeper soul. why mark your face with signs and colours, look straight on. look at the pleasure of a little garden.

Photo by Sonja Benskin

ISSN: 2333-2387