Holy bajoly, we sure are late. Changes are coming to the editorial process to make things smoother in the future. Stay with us. And a quick shout out to the writers who have asked for this reveal. We are sorry. We know it.
As always if you want to become an editor don’t hesitate to contact us: editors@themetric.co.uk
Prose
‘A Holly Garden In The Gray Castle’ by Zechariah Melton
Biography:
Z. L. Melton is an author and the founding member of the Chicago-based musical group, Labors. “A Holly Garden in the Gray Castle” is a short story from his unpublished “Lucky Black Cat” collection.
Comments:
A Holly Garden in the Gray Castle is a recollection of a defining moment in a childs life, featuring The Metrics perhaps youngest main character so far.
Z.Melton establishes vacancy and an aching distance echoing from a heartrending family break-up. It’s as if our narrator wasn’t really there, as if in this particular moment there’s only a before and an after. The first person perspective make the story personal and easy to connect with. That along with its straight-forward prose to let the reader focus on the events unfolding in front of the family.
Did they see their father again? Most likely not. The final act uses the environment fully to describe the turmoil and emotions of the distraught child, lost in a muddy swamp, thinking of what he did wrong to anger his father. And it is only through our own childhood experiences that we as readers can answer him back.
‘Age Of The Turtle’ by Jonathan Alston
Biography:
Jon Alston is a native of Northern California, and graduated with an MA in Creative Writing from California State University, Sacramento. Married for over seven years, he and his wife run JSA Photography. On the off chance he isn’t writing or working on photography, he works for Copilot Press as an intern, editing and binding handmade books. He also teaches English at the International Academy of Design and Technology. His work has appeared, or is forthcoming, in such journals as Midnight Screaming, Conium Review, Skive, and The Encyclopedia Project. Writing is his life.
Comments:
Is Age of the Turtle an actual story or a fairy-tale abstraction? There’s an ambiguity to Alston’s piece where the text transcends real imagery into something likening a theogony, the firsts steps of a private little cosmos. We like it, just as we like the way the words twist and how vowels hop from the tip of the tongue. Take your time and read this one out loud.
‘Mack Rainey’s Game’ by G. D. McFetridge
Biography:
I don’t require anonymity. I’ve stood behind every word I’ve ever written. This work is about being silly, outrageous, politically incorrect and a bit sardonic. Suffice to say mags like The New Yorker & Paris Review couldn’t possibly descend into silliness thus didn’t snap this fine story up! Go figure….
G. D. McFetridge writes from his wilderness home in Montana’s Sapphire Mountains. His fiction and essays are published across America, in Canada, Ireland and the U.K. Although New York City’s literati saw no merit in his six unpublished novels.
Comments:
…And a fine story it is. For his part, McFetridge, or I suppose I should say Mack Rainey, keeps introductions subdued and acerbic, almost as an aside — like most things in his narrative.
He works with the worst of the finest to bridle the west coast’s population of the sexually and morally depraved: purportedly latent public masturbators, rogue homosexual backpackers, and Neo-Nazi abetting lesbians. We’re flung around Rainey’s small world of exaggeration and smarmy observations that borderline the surreal, yet remain grounded enough in reality to where their imprudence still ring well enough in our own lives. Yet the clincher that stays the reader in this daffy story is how jaunty and fresh it’s told.
The features of Rainey’s narrative style give it the qualities of spontaneous and authentic speech rather than writing; a simple syntax that bounces along from quip to quip. Predictions are thwarted at each successive observation with a fresh construction and unorthodox idioms reminiscent of the quick-mouthed 90′s.
Individually, the story thrives by sheer force of character and wit, yet on the whole it suffers from meandering — a lack of purpose to guide the reader to any discernible end. Despite this when we do reach the end, its saucy tune leaves us with a smirk.
‘Fork Me an Apocryphal Tale’ by Marie Lecrivain
Biography:
M. Justine Gerard (aka Marie Lecrivain), has resumed writing fiction after a three-year hiatus. She loves short stories, lotus leaves, and the novels of Michel Houellebeqc. Her short story, “Auntie Vino,” was recently published in the 4th anniversary issue of The Bicycle Review, and another short story, “Goodbye, Devon,” will appear in the inaugural issue of Deep Water Literary Journal (Fall 2013).
Comments:
Apocryphal (comparative more apocryphal, superlative most apocryphal):
Of dubious veracity; of questionable accuracy or truthfulness; anecdotal or in the nature of an urban legend.
With a cheek in tongue dialogue Marie Lecrivain leaves us hungry for more, ‘Fork Me’ is a short and an adorable tale of, well, minor issues in life. And what a relief, there is no grand narrative, talk of the human condition, there’s no social commentary on contemporary culture, yet this little gem is engaging, refined with a brisk pace leaving you with giggles and prolonged silliness. Seinfeldesque is the word I’d choose. I once knew a girl who’s boyfriend just couldn’t stand when the fork sometimes touched her teeth as they ate, as well as putting the spoon in her mouth instead of gently pouring soup down the lips. They eventually broke up. I once broke up with a girl because I can’t really stand people who walk with their feet pointing outwards instead of straight towards their destination. What might seem far off and loony for some, can in certain cases actually become real issues for others, I guess.
‘Hunting Eros’ by Oscar Vargas-Lopez
Biography:
A 25 year old freelance writer working in California
Comments:
A work that hastily read, can be misinterpreted as a try-hard coming of age story, but with a little reflection it is clear that Oscar Vargas-Lopez tries his hand at dark comedy — what kind of character would else blame the universe for his or her inability to get laid and compare themself with a “homeless leper with Down syndrome”. Then again, when you’re that age maybe that’s how important losing virginity felt like?
With an over-the-top start in mind, Hunting Eros and Lopez’s verbose stylistic approach establishes the descent into our main character’s psyche and a megalomaniac crusade towards his defloration. The sexual frustration and the repeated feeling of being a failure seems to indicate that this guy clearly has lost it. There are hints of psychopathy, losing virginity is not a romance in any sense, it’s merely the end of the road and the women along the way, two different kind of goalposts.
Criticism could probably be directed towards the length of the story. It is the opinion of the editors that Hunting Eros could have been shorter and just as good, thus more effective in it’s story-telling. We encourage Oscar Vargas-Lopez to hone his editing skills even further.
Poetry
‘Continental Drift’ by Scott Boyea
Biography:
Drifting, drifting, drifting along; i rid myself of worries and my worries were gone…
Comments:
Continental Drift is as strikingly powerful as it is brief. Images of Pangea and Panthalassa churning away at each other over the course of millennia come to mind as this metaphor on personal change unfurls. Change, being the main idea, is handled with reverence and honor. It is painted as an uncaring but sacred process of nature.
Ending on a powerful note the poem declares that: “All providence left to the tide.”
‘The Care Pathway For The Dying Phase’ by Ray Miller
Biography:
Ray Miller lives in a pink house with too many children.
Comments:
Somber. A look back on a life spent and questioned. Reduced and out of control, maintained through modern medicine. We spy on the personal process of death, ones last observations and critiques, last inquiries and admissions. A powerful perspective bedside with the hope to reconstruct our way of life. To adapt to the future, for the betterment of all life on Earth. With the hope that we can keep our hands clean.
Of course there is sadness in death, naturally there is pain, but within the scope of emotions and physical traumas associated with it there is a glimmer of something unexplainable. To have hope for life is to live a life, despite what is in ones face, and in that is the truth strong enough, willful enough to give life, to end the pain of being, and relinquish an individual to the freedom of death.
‘No Theophany’ by Lee Evans
Biography:
Having spent most of his life in and around Annapolis, Maryland, where he worked for the State Archives, Lee Evans now lives in Bath, Maine, and works for the local YMCA. He sometimes describes himself as a Buddhist who attends a Swedenborgian church. Most of the time he does not describe himself at all.
Comments:
As far as a poems go “No Theophany” passes with flying colors. It communicates exactly what it aims to perfectly: a moment in time framed by its past and present. The sheer surgical precision of the poem is outstanding when you take into consideration how much is being expressed with so little. The atmosphere it creates is deep and thick yet the words used to do so are few and sparse.
‘Ground-Trip’ by Shannon Crosby
Biography:
Shannon Crosby is a rising senior at Vanderbilt University who is majoring in Classical Civilizations and Communications. She enjoys soccer, yoga and American food.
Comments:
Ground-Trip leaves the reader on an island, a small body of land devoid of warmth, surrounded on all sides by water. It is the undeniable feeling of loss, the inescapable emotional aftermath of love.
The author masterfully opens her poem with a line so powerful, it instantly communicates the tone and context of the entire poem. The author sought an other whose own body image they estimated to be above their own. Although briefly attained, it was a victory that could not last. Now the author stands devoid of feeling, haunted by the shadow of the other and incapable of seeing past her repentance, a victim of her own “victory”. There is little to celebrate.
‘Singing a Song of a Snug’ by David Rutter
Biography:
David Rutter is a Los Angeles based writer of poetry, fiction and theatre. This year his work has been published in Haggard & Halloo, The Wilderness House Literary Review, Subliminal Interiors, Dressing Room Poetry Journal, Clean Sheets, Leaves of Ink, Eskimo Pie, Eunoia Review, The Los Angeles Review of Los Angeles, Vagabonds, The Stray Branch and most recently, the Los Angeles Times. He is not writing a screenplay.
Comments:
Holding down any other key wouldn’t have captured the raw emotion found in the opening. Embraced, toe to toe, wishing for an eternity to spend together. The reader is led to a place of comfort, love. Led to a place where your problems become trivial, to a place of substance, of such meaningful movement that we forget ourselves and each other, and move together as one.
For those of us who are lucky enough to share this kind of intimacy with another, to constantly touch, give and whisper little affections, this poem serves as a beautiful reminder that time spent in love is time well spent.
