January 28, 2024

Meet PS Conway, Our New Poetry Writer-in-Residence

Meet PS Conway, Our New  Poetry Writer-in-Residence

After a grueling quiz with poet PS Conway, administered by your Fictional Cafe poets Yong and Vera, along with me, your founder, on the six most fascinating drinking establishments in Ireland, an explanation of a potato famine, and a perfect recitation of Molly Bloom’s soliloquy in James Joyce’s Ulysses, we have anointed PS Conway our new Poetry Writer-in-Residence for 2024-25. Delighted with his perfect score we capped his nomination with this interview below, which confirmed him as an excellent choice. Another P.S.: we choose a Fiction Writer-in-Residence and a Poetry Writer-in-Residence every two alternating years. Expect to see, and read, a lot of PS’s captivating poetry in both images and words. JACK: Hello, faithful members of Fictional Café’s Coffee Club. I’m here with Vera West, our former Poetry Writer-in-Residence, to interview Vera’s successor, PS Conway,…

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January 25, 2024

As I Make You

As I Make You

A Flash Fiction by Matthew Bala Image Courtesy of Al Quino, unsplash.com Bulging my fingers into the spinning clay, I look into the rotating bottom and let my tears glisten there—the figure moves faster than my hands can shape, and I’m left with only a few touches to produce the right form.  The pad of my thumb grazes the orbiting ovoid, trimming up and at its waist into some obscene shape; surrendering a chuckle, I retreat my hands, looking at this earthly bong I’ve now made. The long snout stretches for air, its bottom rounded to the sides of the hog pan.  My palms now fondle the roundness of my creation, feeling the argil beard my cupped hands and cuticles of bending fingers. Deliberately, I close my two arms in on each other, shooting my…

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December 20, 2023

“Plucked,” A Novel in Verse Excerpt by FC’s Vera West

“Plucked,” A Novel in Verse Excerpt by FC’s Vera West

Seventeen-year-old Iza auditioned on a whim and got accepted (on a scholarship) to a creative arts prep school. Even with just a year left until she graduates, attending this school will give her the edge she needs to be a successful classical violinist and give her more options than what she currently has in the impoverished town where she grew up; but without the support of her mother getting there will be a challenge. After convincing her best friend to drive her to school, working extra shifts to save up money and having her granny forge her father’s signature on the application, Iza is finally ready to make the great escape to Everleigh. 1 She has pluck, they say, with optimism in spades, surely all her dreams will come true.     “Iza Jones, are…

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December 5, 2023

“Happy Birthday to Us,” Poetry by Bruce McRae

“Happy Birthday to Us,” Poetry by Bruce McRae

Happy Birthday To Us I arrived mid-century. A flaw in the seamed dimensions. A stone dropped down a cistern. Already ancient, wonderstruck, fire in my gills and hair, life-naked. I was born all of a sudden. A shift in the given paradigm. A handheld globe of teeth and fur standing athwart of all of history. A faint itch, a rudimentary element, I appeared as if quite by accident. A figure blurred by the side of the road, an eleventh planet, a tiger’s teardrop, a snowman in the parson’s orchard. Heavy with dreams, I was awoken early for my rough appointment. A manic isotope in a fat-lit cavern. One of those molecular contrivances you hear so much about. A mighty atom. A coy abstraction. ** Reality The rules of the game remain couched in esoteric phrases…

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November 27, 2023

“As the Storm Arrives,” Poetry by David Dephy

“As the Storm Arrives,” Poetry by David Dephy

As the Storm Arrives Silence with its excellent syntax is so real, rhythm compensates breathe when the stream of our thoughts shapes our lives, we are the same and always seek each other when silence between us dies. Are we all identical in nature, different in degree? Children can smell the wind more than pets, as you know they prowl the streets, and the smell of the wind will color them lilac, though for now only the moon rises, and each tree, remains as the heart of a wind, each wind a string on time’s lyre, divine love reflected upon its own reflection, wickedness kindling that flame of darkness, but when the hero strikes her anvil of freedom, the vision returns, here the mist is a single thought floating within islands of silence, and the…

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