Every Day Poets

Will launch on Nov 1st at
http://www.everydaypoets.com/

Submit A Poem!
"A new poem every day"

We need Xmas Poems too :)

October Links

Having won the Micro Horror Trophy last year, I decided to set myself the challenge of entering 6 stories for the competition this year ranging in length thus: 666, 555, 444, 333, 222, 111 words. I did it! Quite a marathon! Links to follow but some are up already - go and see them.
http://www.microhorror.com/microhorror/category/author/oonah-v-joslin/
The Titles are:
End Game (not for the contest but very halloween)
Victim
Sole Survivor
Sleep Tight (My personal favourite)
Oh for a friendly Face
Duplicitous Creatures
Name of the Beast (topical)
GENESTARE (anagram title)
Titration of the Spirit ( a drabble of metaphisical proportions)

You might like to know more about Micro Horror's editor, Nathan Rosen, who is not horrible at all but somewhat human...sorry Black Dog Nate - it had to be said :) Here's the link to an interview with him:
http://shortstory.us.com/2008/10/interview-with-editor-microhorror/

A Horror of Horrors is one of my longer stories and it is now up at Demon Minds my first time in that publication. http://www.demonminds.com/tales/a_horror_of_horrors.html

You Must Remember This is at Every Day Fiction this month and it's one of my favourites. It made me laugh writing it and it makes me laugh reading it. Unapologetically very silly indeed :)
http://www.everydayfiction.com/you-must-remember-this-by-oonah-v-joslin/#comments

The Book is at http://www.joyfulonline.net/fiction.htm
My nephew Robert will perhaps recognise that this story is for him.

The Poem in Shine is untitled but you'll not need a title for this one. http://www.theshinejournal.com/joslinov.htm

Halloween is a tongue in cheek ghost story.
http://staticmovement.com/ovj.htm
Look out for Avis, Fionnula, Mark Dalligan and Sarah Ann Watts too - Well done, Writewords buddies.

A Brief Encounter is up for your entertainment. I hope it amuses you. http://www.short-humour.org.uk/writersshowcase/abriefencounter.htm

End Game http://www.microhorror.com/microhorror/author/oonah-v-joslin/end-game/ see if you can guess what John is up to.

Here's one I forgot to post: The Magic Hour
http://thepygmygiant.blogspot.com/search?q=Oonah+V+Joslin

Bewildering Stories' Quarterly Review

4th in a row! I am stunned. Thank you to the editors for choosing What Boundaries. I hope anyone who missed it first time round, will read it now. It is a prose poem - a response to the rise in knife crimes in the UK.
http://www.bewilderingstories.com/issue302/what_boundaries.html

Look for Sarah Ann Watts too. She's a Writewords pal and a very good writer. Congrats Sarah.

Oonahversal View

For many years now capitalism has run wild. Back in the fifties we used to save up for the things we wanted. People have been encouraged into debt to make big bonusses for those at the top. If the company fails - the bosses still get the big bonusses. The incentives to greed are everywhere and they lead to cheating and lies. We're all living on wealth nobody is creating in any manufacturing base. It is therefore illusory. Shifting funds around electronically has merely enhanced the number of ways problems could be swept under the carpet.

The real tragedy is, Mr Average and his wife believed the dream and bought the HumVe - believed they were in safe hands. And what is truly disturbing is, that the melt down of this capitalist tissue of lies should be dramatised by a president in such apocalyptic terms, because that is just a way of shifting the stink to God or Fate.

As in the old Eden story, nobody wants to take responsiblity - admit the lie. I very much fear that instead of finding a solution, the powers that be will cover up the tracks with a greater lie: "It's okay now folks...back to business as usual."

Communism doesn't work either of course. What we need is a new vision where resources are more equitably distributed throughout the world and we all work as humanity to solve the problems that face us in global terms.

Now do I have your vote? Or is my Star Trek showing?
Oonah

Oonah's 11

11 pieces in e-zines in one month - that is! A new record. Please scroll down to September's Links, visit the links and leave comments/vote where possible.
You'll also find information about my motivation in writing these pieces.

Thank you for reading.

Every Day Poets

One of our contributors said:

"The personal comments from you C & N are like bits of poetic gold a writer can hoard away for a rainy day. They are valuable!"

It is our hope at EDP that even if your work is not accepted, we may provide constructive ideas wherever possible from the feedback we provide. That has been a mark of Every Day Fiction and we follow in the family tradition.

Thank you R for your generous comment.

Bewildering Stories 307 Response for The Last Laugh

“The Skeleton told all the flesh off its bones.” In challenge 307, Don Webb asks for an explication of 'told' in that line.

One has first to go back to the original artwork, displayed alongside the poem. It was entitled, “Have you heard the one about…” That in itself is enough to suggest a reason for using the word ‘told’. From that title one can deduce that the book may be a joke book and that would explain the skeleton’s grin and that rat’s wrapped attention.

But if we go beyond that, don’t all skeletons grin? How long had this one been reading the book and is it really a book of jokes or is it the book of Life. Death has the last laugh because the book is empty. The skeleton has no story left to tell. The corpse has decayed to the point where there are only bones and eyeballs. The eyeballs can still read but the book appears to have no words in it.

The skeleton finished the book long ago and has had to make up his own stories for a long time to keep that rat entertained. The word ‘told’ is in the active voice. This is a deliberate activity. Perhaps he thinks he has fooled the rat or that the rat is actually his friend. At any rate the rat is his sole companion, and he the rat’s. To be sitting there locked in this battle against time, with a companion who would gnaw on your bones is a cruel joke.

Tolled can also be implied in reading aloud, as the skeleton does. The slow relentless passage of time marked out at a steady pace. He tolled the skin off his bones, in minutes, hours, days…

In this scenario, death has not quite had the last laugh. The last laugh is still to come. There are two other players here, the rat who will stay alive if he can still find food and the skeleton whose eyeballs have saved him thus far. Of course if he stops telling, the rat will eat his eyeballs and then the rat too will starve.

There is irony in the word told. It is right at the beginning of the poem but is already past tense. There is no hope for either of them. Death will at last have the last laugh - for every tale like every tail must come to an end.