Story and Poem of the Month

Our picks this month come from one of our brilliant, hardworking and all-round wonderful volunteer editors. Here's their decision:

It has been a privilege to be able to choose two stand-out pieces in the
month of May.  There have been many very wonderful pieces; the two that have
been selected have a touch of strangeness, a slight shift of perspective that
reminds us of the oddness of living.  A short story full of poetry and a poem
full of story.  Both take us to places we might not otherwise have visited.
The short story, ‘Gave it to the Sea', by Stephen Thom is written so
poetically.  Stephen has drawn a character that we yearn to help, but he has
slipped between the cracks into a strange seaside landscape; he exists on the
margins of land and life.  Two women care for him but he is slipping away,
becoming something other in another place.  Not a conventional story, it is
an enticement to experiment and look into the corners of our minds for ideas.
Socialeaf’s poem, ‘A Room in Chungking’, is spare and brief.  With a
few words, a whole way of living is conjured.  The window-shaped painting
hangs heavy with meaning.  The reader can’t help but to try to join the
dots and fill in the spaces to make the stories that hide between the lines.
There are rooms like this in every place; we are both alienated and united in
the common feeling of things not being quite as we want them.

http://www.abctales.com/story/stephen-thom/gave-it-sea