Update. 1.0

Things have been a little crazy lately. The editors are in two different places, and two different lives. We keep our eyes out for good writing, but we cannot find it all, or print it all. It becomes an all consuming task. Our interests widen, we begin to show interest in music, writing, and art. We decide we should try to showcase these interests through our online vehicle. These things require time and patience and money. We are both poor students. We can only try to maintain and share good writing as well as we can.

So this is an apology. It is also an introduction. This blog/literary magazine/online repository of things that are inspirational and cool is trying to expand. There's too much media to consume, but we try to weed through it to share the good things, and the true things.

We hope that this does not disillusion you. We hope that this does not discourage submissions. This land is your land. Only so much as you make of it. We are all part of this community of creatives, and there is much about social content creation and internet culture that we are new to. That doesn't mean we shouldn't attempt to share what we think is relevant and powerful to people who would like to see it.

good things.

Only a Few Things. Edition Eight.

After a hiatus for us. We are back. And on the longest day of the year, we post our shortest poem to date.


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and here.
Liana Quill


          and here


   it is told -- Damascus 
floored -
                      eyes holding 
witness

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Liana Quill is a poet from Virginia. She was the winner of the 2010 Mississippi Review Poetry Series Contest. She enjoys reading, smoking cigarettes, traveling, and teaching English. Read more about her here, and a guide for reading her poetry here.

On another (slightly longer) note, we are still actively looking for submissions. If you would like your poetry or short fiction to be featured here, email us to have your work considered.

Follow us!

We're now on the twitter! Follow us @fromwestegg for good sentences and other literary thoughts that are under 140 characters.

We invite you to submit some of your powerful words and strong sentences.

Edition 6.5

Today we've got just one short publication. A short short, from a friend who calls himself Lars Incorporated. Here it is.

Some nights

by Lars Incorporated

some nights I’ll look up towards the sky and see those three stars of Orion the hunter’s belt. I can see the male with his arm pulling back a bow with all his might, aiming with all his concentration on some young wild thing in the forest. I see this image for a second, but I like to replace it with a dancer, arms stretched out towards their limits, on one leg, the other almost parallel to the ground. I can’t see her face, because its craned away from me, the strain of sinews and tendons in her neck telling me more about her than a simple face could. Its on those nights when I’m likely to stay outside for hours, smoking more cigarettes than are good for me and remembering when I almost drove us into that gigantic pile of hay in my father’s old truck. Or when I told you I was looking for something better than all of this. With you gone it almost seems like I can begin to live my life, but then I hear a story here, and see a postcard from you at a friends house, and I rage silently for a little while, and that’s what drives me out here on these nights. Outside with my bottle cradled between my legs, either on top of the barn or just outside, leaning against the cracked paint walls, where I can see the whole field and there aren’t any trees to block my view of the sky. I whisper to myself first, sometimes singing softly and finding new ways to throw my voice against the thickness of cold night air. After about half the bottle, though, I start a conversation. I ask the first mouse I see if he’s heard your thundering footstep around anywhere. He hasn’t, I figure, since he just keeps on towards the safety and warmth of the haystacks inside. I try to test the high wispy clouds, hovering next to the moon as if for warmth, but really out of loneliness, clouds like to stick together on land because every one of them spends a lonely summer at sea. I shout up, so they hear me, and ask if they’d floated in from bigger cities on their way to relax out here, and if they’d seen anything of you, and if you were doing fine. That’s what gets me the most. By the near end of the bottle I know. The clouds look back and start, silently, to float away, first in front of the moon, shining brighter than they ever could on their own. They have, and they’re going back to your glow. It’s too dark out here for them, and they don’t like the smallness of this town. I shout up to them once more, asking them to give you my love, but they just keep slowly floating on, because they know, just as I, you’d never accept those regards.

Lars Incorporated is a collective of authors from the New Mexico and Arizona area, focusing on internalization of geographical alignment struggles, ie, acclimation to the New American Climate.

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On a different but similar note. We've found another blog to recommend to you readers (whoever you are). 

It's a small blog where the author posts once in a while a story of 299 words or less. "Anything else is waste," he says. Hopefully you'll like it, hopefully he'll submit to us once or twice or 299 times.

http://davidbdale.wordpress.com/

check it out. tell us we're not sharing good writing.

Edition: Valentines

Happy, or unhappy Valentines day everybody. Today we've got some heartfelt words from some new people. Enjoy!


Remember to tell your friends and submit all your creative thoughts and secret desires!
westegg[dot]publishing[at]gmail[dot]com




I could forget

Antonio Urquidez

If you were a blond-haired, blue-eyed girl,
a taller, older glass of water.

refreshing and irresistible but not hard to forget.

if my hand didn’t rest on your hip quite as well as it did,
a different style or a different little yellow house down the street from mine.

my aunt called this morning for my dad.
told me she found my uncle Gino in a jail in Bakersfield
tell your father to check his email she said.

I’ve been smoking more cigarettes since you’ve gone.
we all yearn for a taste of fire.




Outside
Ezra James Woollan

leave for the night, don’t come back till you’ve seen it.
walk down the middle of your street, make sure its empty.
look at the streetlights. the yellow orange glow on the hood of a truck on bricks.
listen to the sound of your footsteps totally alone. don’t wear your slippers.

this is hell.

take this chance, and remember i will not be here when you get back.

Some time ago...
Tobias Newell

the worst day of my life?
i could tell you about when i broke my middle finger, or when my birthday just became another day.

or just the walk from my car to your house. the night after we talked for the last time.
snow crushing reluctantly under my boots, quiet crunches telling me to give up and go home.

i got in and out of my car at least three times.
the walk up to the front desk was the worst. my stomach had that feeling
churning or turning, i’m not sure. you’ve got to clench your teeth though when you feel it

i took the stairs up to your floor
to hold off the truth
just a little longer

i knocked only once, softly. then i called,
you picked up, but i didn’t hear your voice, just the sounds of crowds and laughing. you were in a club or a bar. i hung up.

Last Year

T.R. Johnson

Last year started shaky, 

Similar to the one before. 

It was up and down, 

Left and right, 

Neither here nor there. 

But along the line 

I learned some things 

About you and me and her, 

She left me twice 

And I’m sure 

She’ll leave again 

once more. 

But then again, 

You picked me up 

Or so I thought, 

When she walked out that door. 

And now I’m drunk 

Passed out again 

Drooling on the floor. 

This year started shaky, 

Similar to the one before. 

Life is up and down, 

Left and right, 

Neither here nor there.

Mr. Urquidez went to Colorado State University, he recently went through a break up. He is living in Los Angeles, writing screenplays and poetry.

Mr. Woollan went to the University of Ohio, studying History. He now teaches in Dayton City School district.

Mr. Newell is currently unemployed, information on his book, "Waiting for Maria" is available only by emailing tnewell@mindspring.com

Mr. Johnson No bio is available for Mr. Johnson, he remains shrouded in mystery, his words speaking for him.

Edition Five.

Today we're doing a couple of things differently. Publishing just one story this Edition, which may or may not become part of a series of stories that may or may not be connected.


Now the next announcement is one concerning the next Edition: Valentines Day Poetry! So if you or any of your friends have some excellent (or terrible) poetry you'd like to share, send it in! 
We've already got a few submissions, and we're eager for more: westegg [dot] publishing [at] gmail [dot] com


Now, on to our story!


Note: Neither one of our editors endorse love as a feeling or an idea with any basis in reality, but we encourage love if it inspires creative endeavors.
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Running to the City
Sarah Fogle

          He’d been telling his mom for weeks that he needed to leave. She cradled a bowl of steaming sweet potatoes, walking toward the rough wooden table with tremulous steps, and he just said it, right then and there: “Mom, I’ve gotta go somewhere, I’ve gotta go real soon.” And his mom just let the bowl slip from her hands onto the table, slip right out of those bone fingers, and the blue glass cracked and the pulpy orange seeped through real slug-like. He wanted to yell at her so badly, he wanted to leave her to scoop up the mess and just run out to the field and scream into the tall grass. He could hear them now, the cicadas thrumming outside at dusk like dumb drone bees around a hive, humming like they were speaking to his bones.

          But he’d never run out before; he wasn’t like his father. He pushed himself away from the table, trembling hands gripping the table edge as if making to leave deep marks, and he looked up into those blueberry eyes of hers and saw the beginnings of a wild rain.

          “Oh momma, don’t cry. Now, you know I—“ and he cut himself off as his hands slipped under the cracked bowl and carried a heaping mound to the open trash can. He turned around to see his mother plucking at the glass shards like a cat trying to swat at fish in a pond, her hands too frozen to grab up the pieces as she shuffled them around like bingo chips into a pile he could sweep off the table. The sweet potato smell was everywhere, the rich earthy warmth mingling with the sweet marshmallow buttery air. Everything was indistinguishable now, a swirl of pulp with bits of blue glass. He tried not to cut himself, but it usually happened somewhere, somehow to someone or other, and it may as well have been him better than anyone else. Maris ran down the stairs in her cutest pink dress, her six-year old smile like sunlight through musty barn walls, and she froze on the second-to-last step and started to wrinkle the edges of her dress, and her face crumpled up like a paper bag, the stork bite in the middle of her forehead flaring cherry red as she saw her momma’s tears.

          He tried to clean his hands off best he could before running to his little sister and pulling her up to his chest where she breathed ragged, and he let her hot tears soak up while he petted her dark brown waves of hair.

          “Jason, you can’t leave, no way, no how.” His mother sputtered, her hands halfway through the pulpy mess, staring with eyes he knew she couldn’t see through for all the tears. He walked over, cradling Maris in his arms as she shuddered like a butterfly cocoon in the breeze, and waited for his mother to slough the pulp off onto her apron and reach out for the little girl.

          Stepping back, Jason looked at them all, glimpsing his own reflection in the kitchen door, the three of them a bright mess, marked somewhere by the orange pulp, the palm of his hand stinging smartly and his mother’s fingers covered in tiny cuts. His momma let out something like a cut-off laugh, a burst of giggle she choked down real quick. Maris buried her little head into her momma’s thick sweater, her dark hair spilling out over arms swimming in creamy cable knit sleeves. He watched his momma run her fingers through her daughter’s hair, and he uncrossed his arms real slow and made for the kitchen door with steps like whispers. And just as he was halfway out the door and his momma’s eyes jumped up and stared right at him, he say he’d be right back, and then he went.

Edition Four.

Today some new art from our first photography submission. Then a beautiful poem from a friend. Remember we always welcome new submissions: westegg.publishing@gmail.com

My Hair

Dad

Ana Morales first began taking pictures in 2004, when she took an "Intro to Photography" class at a community college. She enjoys making the outrageous beautiful, and the beautiful outrageous. More of her art can be found on her website: www.ana-luisa.com

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I remember you

                         after Flavius J. Fisher

Maggy Roza

The sun sets in a burst of color,

settling into the hills

the way I sank into your arms, the way

you gave yourself to me, the way you held

my hand as if you were afraid

I'd float away,

the nights we spent together

on Fisherman's Wharf, telling no one,

knowing everything, the way your passing

glances made me feel

          on fire             in harmony

doused in the light of God or the Devil,

and I don't know what the birds sing

at dusk in the swamp, because all I hear

           is your name

spreading like rings on the water,

      in my veins          in my mind

how  I wanted to shout that I loved you

but I was afraid of the echo, the way

the sun is afraid, the way it sets

in a burst of color

because every time might be its last.

Maggy is a poet from Sacramento, California. She has four siblings, idolizes Jack Kerouac, and despises Southern hospitality. She plans one day to write a punk rock opera.