Story and Poem of the Month *UPDATED*

Our Picks of the Month for May have been chosen by blackjack-davey (who's also got a very good idea for a competition in the near future!). Here they are:

Honourable mentions this month go to Yvonne Anderson’s It was Our Home  where we experience the writer’s  displacement and dawning recognition that the traffic and bustle and soup kitchen serving the homeless is where she now lives and by extension this is who she is... the Edwardian villa has collapsed away

http://www.abctales.com/story/yvonne-anderson/it-was-our-home

Charlie Hughes Strings  is a great bit of storytelling  only slight let down by the grand guignol effects of part two. Always prefer my horror understated, more MR James than Clive Barker but that's because I'm an ancient old stoat!

http://www.abctales.com/story/charlie-hughes/strings-part-1

Michael SR Valentine’s poem a  Beautiful Bundle of Buoyant Joy comes on like an old folk song with a terrible emphasis on buoyancy and water, mothers at the end of their tether and wolfish appetites…. 

http://www.abctales.com/story/michael-s-r-valentine/beautiful-bundle-buo...

But  I had to award the picks of the months for poetry to Bear’s end of the world and prose to MJG’S Breaking Rules. When I read them I had that frisson in my coccyx  and my hair stood on end. Bear’s  prose poem has the clarity of blackbird song  with its outlaw scenarios and crumpled sheets and hotel room lovemaking. How would we spend this long little minute—would we really be uploading images on social media or renting rooms so we can love one another?  Bear goes Bonny and Clyde in the final section busting out for the hills. 

http://www.abctales.com/story/bear/endoftheworld

MJG’S Breaking Rules (now removed for submission) is one of those rare stories, a totally effortless read that carries the reader through  rule breaking to a moment of psychological truth. I like the ambiguity of the piece, the necessity of lawlessness and the story behind the rule breaking about whistle blowing and spreadsheets. We walk through each scene, clear visuals, nice camera angles , great POV! Well done to everyone! 

*UPDATE* 

New Story of the Month choice:

Charlie Hughes Strings  is a great bit of storytelling only slight let down t(o my mind) by the grand guignol effects of part two. Always prefer my horror understated, more MR James than Clive Barker but that's because I'm an ancient old stoat! Charlie totally inhabits his narrator, a last chance singer songwriter who has abandoned his family to make music--- within that dyanmic is the conundrum of many of us writers--when do we knows it's bad? when does a soul enriching activity transform into one of solipsism and selfishness? is art always good for the soul?

http://www.abctales.com/story/charlie-hughes/strings-part-1