Selkie Zine publishes The Tattoo

Alaskan artist Ellie Schmidt (whom I met in residence at Elsewhere)is one of the publishers of this zine. One of my pieces is in this issue. Try it, you'll like it:

BLURB.COM

Selkie Zine 8: Wayfinding

In this Selkie Zine we ask our contributors to tell us about the tools they use for finding their way in the world.

The Tattoo

Published in "12x12", Coastal Carolina University, 2010 and the Wayfinding issue 8 of Selki magazine, Sitka, Alaska, 2018

        She studies him from the dark silence of the passenger seat. He is wearing the Night: black jeans, black sweater with sleeves pushed up to the elbow, tiny star of a diamond in his earlobe. His pale profile and outstretched arm glow, moon-like, in the green dashboard light. Left wrist draped across the steering wheel, his hand falls languorously into the shadows, defined only by the red coal of a cigarette.
     Blue tattoos jump from the white skin of his forearm: the Hindu sanskrit Om, the Taoist yin yang, and on the inside (along the soft part where you'd slide a needle) the Druid design she'd once planned for her own arm. He'd had it inked into his flesh just as she'd drawn it years ago on vellum, with one exception; the intertwined deer had become hounds. She sighs.
     His face turns. Eyebrows lift his eyes – a ravaged blue, bright even in the car's gloom – over the edges of his glasses. The thick lenses seem a paradoxical accessory to the black leather motorcycle jacket on the seat between them, to the copper beard, to the fiery sweep of hair she imagines might sear her if she touches it...
     He leans toward her. She smells cinnamon oil and tobacco. She envisions the golden god, Shiva, dancing for her, offering flames of desire and destruction.The auburn brows arch higher. “What?”
     “Just taking a last look at you,” she murmurs. She closes her eyes, frees her long hair over the back of the seat, and stretches into repose. He turns back to the road, satisfied with her answer.
     The future is no more than a thin gray line of sunrise beyond the windshield.

Tintagel

  

        Flash fiction. From a visit to Tintagel Castle above Merlin's Cave on the Cornish coast. 

    There's no castle here – only gray piles of stacked stone devoured by the soft jaws of the earth; overwhelmed and overgrown by wind swept waves of green grass and ocean fog. And yet, I can imagine its walls rising above the bounding waves. Here was the chapel: a long room ending in a stone altar. Was this a kitchen? Small openings in the foot thick wall would have allowed the sea air to circulate.  What fires must have had to burn all day here? And at what toil was fuel carried, on bent backs, up these steep stairways? Oh! I can see the ghosts of people past: A woman gathers her long skirts to navigate the wet stone steps. Ahead of her, a boy leaps from one level of stairs to another. Across the headland, I can hear the faint sound of sheep. And from somewhere on the salty wind, drifts the ring of hammer on anvil.  That hard life has faded now into fantasy and fairytale. The juxtaposition of realities collide in my mind's eye and I am dizzy, suddenly, looking down from the castle cliffs. 

     How often has someone counted the high tides of this place?

welcome

We all have several identities. Most of us are able to blend or separate them at will most of the time. This blog is my Writer identity. It engages - hopefully in a beautiful, interesting and officially "fictional" manner - with the Others. I think you will find yourself here also. Your comments, both constructively critical and wildly encouraging are appreciated.