The Abstract Art Gallery
A writing gallery created by writers from around the world. From poetry to song lyrics, from essays to entire novels and short stories.
The battle slogs on relentlessly.
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…motes of dust dance in the light, gracefully swirling inside the beam that reveals what the darkness hides. There is no trace of even the slightest movement of air. What makes the motes dance? Some sort of electromagnetic energy? Something else? I don’t know. Where did all this dust come from? If the beam…
By K. L. Shipley
Read MoreKilling them would have been the straightforward solution. I didn't want to kill them. I wanted them gone.
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…come bent on pillage and plunder, roaming tribes driven from their native home to invade mine. No doubt they have heroic ballads celebrating the boldest among them, justifying their ravaging ways…
By K. L. Shipley
Read MoreI can remember almost everything past the age of two. How could I have gotten this wrong?
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…moved West to seek his fortune. He set out from Cainsville, Missouri on some unknown day in the 1880’s with little more to sustain him than hope and ambition, he worked his way across the country until he reached the San Juaquin Valley in central California. He got there just in time…
By K. L. Shipley
Read More…was a sunny day in April on 55th Road in Elmhurst, Queens. I was almost six years old. Alice Harrington, who lived across the street, had invited me to her play house, built by her grandfather. The wooden house with white walls and green shutters had a realistic gabled roof and benches inside where we could sit. The little house was in the middle of a garden, so in the spring and summer time it seemed to me an…
By Anita G. Gorman
Read MoreThis is a piece I wrote about growing up gay in the…
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…suppose I'm an old romantic at heart. Even though I should know better, I still adhere to the old school notion of 'true love'. I tried deeply to dismiss it - telling myself it was all too complicated and that I couldn't possibly put my body through the angst of uncertainty that comes…
By Ashley Mangtani
Read MoreThis is a very short nonfiction piece loosely based on the theme of war about a recent event in my household.
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…adult daughter, Sophie, recently moved home from a distant state after the traumatic break up of her live-in relationship. She explained that living in his house was no longer an option. We knew she would arrive with her beloved cat, Posey, in tow. But we also have two adored cats, Nalen and Juniper, and our household…
By Kathy Miller
Read MoreDid my memory deceive me? I didn't know. I wanted to know.
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…resolute watchmen patrol the echoing emptiness. Their probing flashlights scanning for any slight thing amiss. The silence broods heavily around them. It’s lonely work. No other souls in sight. They walk for miles through the empty rooms and corridors of these spooky deserted building…
By K. L. Shipley
Read MoreWhen the passion of the equinox stirs the blood and the sap begins to rise, so then does Dionysus, the god of all that is wet and glistening.
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…the winds blows wet and warm. When gray winter retreats from blooming green becoming. When new leaves dance like dyads in the rain. When the passion of the equinox stirs the blood and the sap begins to…
By K. L. Shipley
Read MoreThere is something supernatural about a world that appears and disappears every twelve hours.
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…been fascinated by shallow pools of clear water. I’m drawn to them by charm I do not understand. They’re inviting in some mystical, perhaps primordial way. Memories seem to be connected to such pools, though I have no such conscious memories. There are theories that memories can be carried by…
By K. L. Shipley
Read More…good comes of it. It’s a lot of work. New lies have to agree with old lies or the truth will out, and everyone will know you’re a liar. You have to make sure your lies don’t lie to each other. I’m too lazy spend all that energy defending what was never true. Figuring out what’s true is hard enough without adding lies to the…
By K. L. Shipley
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