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What kind of stories are
contained in Silent Voices, Volume 3? Here is an excerpt from a section of the book called
"Whispers":
Tod Goldberg — “Living Room”
You never get used to people disappearing. It’s not the lack of closure
precisely, but the sense that perhaps you’ve played a role you
weren’t aware of initially. With Joanne and the kids, the signs were
there: the packing, the airline tickets to Hawaii, Australia and
Burma purchased on my credit card, the strange way Joanne kept
telling me to stay the fuck away from her or she’d call the police,
the way she called the police, the way she and her three kids (I’m
almost certain there were three of them now — I’ve counted the
bedrooms and it makes sense) were here one night and then that next
morning they weren’t.
Ed Vega — "Tenants in Common"
He remembers watching Stacy
come and go for the five months since she moved in. The pop of her
door. An overture. An appetizer. Must have set off chemicals in
his brain. Then she comes out. Mornings, between the initial pop
and her appearance, he imagines Stacy dressing, drinking her cup of
ambition, the whole waking-up-ritual. Then she leaves.
Murray Dunlap — “NightSwimming: A Song for Andrew”
But
back to your point about metanarrative fiction. If the writer wants
to tell the story of a friend’s death, for example, and is not able
to do it on his own because he has created a mental break from the
death and therefore seeks therapy as a means to getting at the
truth, isn’t it more honest to include the psychiatrist in the
story? Metanarrative or not, it’s more honest.”
Peter A.
Balaskas — “Duet”
“You will follow my lead,” he muttered.
“You shall do as I say.” But after twenty life-draining
minutes, he sighed in defeat, slumped in his dining
room chair, and lowered his head in shame, right in
front of his mortal enemy: an old Remington typewriter
that was passed down by his paternal grandfather.
Joel
Levin — “Collapse”
Staring at my putty-puss, as I’d nicknamed it, I remembered how,
as a kid just stepping into adolescence, I used to agonize over my
looks, questioning my ability to attract friends in general and
women in particular. Quite a burden to place upon a face! Maybe my
face was now making me pay the price for having demanded too much of
it, or, for that matter, maybe it was getting back at me for not
giving it the same attention anymore. Could a face acquire an ego of
its own? Or become a tyrant?
Philip DeRise — “Invisible
Tunnels” (Contest Winner)
Kahn’s entire empire was in view from the panorama cityscape his
office windows afforded him. He could see from the farthest reaches
east and south harbor to the northern-most wooded peninsula. With
his finger, he could trace a thousand miles of track hidden beneath
the grid of city streets.
Pete Duval — “A
excerpt from The Libertarian”
Over on the desk the drawing he’d made—he had not forgotten it.
There was always something sad about leaving a motel room. He took
in the dingy carpet and the chipped edges of the furniture.
Everything was still or settling into stillness. If time was an
illusion, as he had often suspected, then he’d always be here.
Forever, no matter where he went. In this motel room trying to draw
the impossible.
B.L. Pawelek — “One
With Nature”
Mida Point was a twenty-minute drive north along the western
coast of the island. John figured it may take a bit longer
since he couldn’t see too well down the Okinawan streets as the
storm littered them with palm tree branches and other plant life.
As he made his way, John rolled down his window at times to peer
over the seawall. The waves looked huge and rolling.
Mida should be awesome.
Travis Sentell — “Keeping
Count”
The quarry had been a steady source of income for the two of
them. Every perfect rock, another dollar in the bank. They built
their lives rock by rock, until they had sold off the last of them
and the pits closed down. The echo was a daily reminder of what had
been there. An echo of security lost. And sometimes, a mocking echo
of the voice Ros was sure she used to speak with. In different days.
Brent
Robison — “A Confession of Love and Emptiness”
My hand that writes this is a moving shape full of space, like the
Styrofoam cup, an illusion, and the perfect hand-shaped space that exists
there, moving, without the gray burden of flesh and bone, without the clutter
of cells and molecules, without the dirt of sub-atomic particles—that living
invisible fire of perfect open space that is the soul of my moving hand, that
is what writes here, writes truth here, writes unutterable names of things that
never were, writes them in invisible ink on an insubstantial page, a page so
blank it is merely the thought of a page.
Marlon
James — “War in Babylon”
Poor people would use gun right if the gun was they own. Me warn
you bout gun, you stupid child. Me warn you that Kingston gun don’t
squirt water when they pull the trigger. But you was always a
stubborn girl. You ears was always tough. There was a time when that
was the thing me did like bout you. But that blessing curse you as
soon as you step off the El Paso Number One bus that Friday morning
in 1976 when you come to town with nothing but your mother suitcase
that she use to send the winter clothes.
Peter Balaskas
Managing Editor
Ex Machina Press, LLC.
Volume 2
review • See Whispers
Volume 1
review • See
excerpts
ORDER Silent
Voices
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