Story and Poem of the Month

Our Story and Poem of the Month for July, very kindly chosen by Mark Say:

Poem of the month

It’s been a tough call to make, with a handful of poems impressing for their clever delivery of words combined with intelligent ideas. As the top pick, I feel it was shaded by In the Silence of Circuits (https://www.abctales.com/story/yutka/silence-my-circuits) by Yutka, an intriguing stream of images that takes the reader into a hard-to-define space between human consciousness and artificial intelligence. It suggests to me that it may ultimately be difficult to determine between human and machine.

A handful of other poems impressed: Imperfect Beauty by Ewan (https://www.abctales.com/story/ewan/imperfect-beauty), Making Potions by jem (https://www.abctales.com/story/jem/making-potions), Break Down of a Breakdown by kheldar https://www.abctales.com/story/kheldar/break-down-breakdown), and Candi Staton, the Sea and Me by Turlough (https://www.abctales.com/story/turlough/candi-staton-sea-and-me).

Story of the Month                                                       

It took a second read of a handful of stories to make a decision, and I’ve chosen Itan Vero’s The Things We Do for Love (https://www.abctales.com/story/itane-vero/things-we-do-love).  It’s the tale of a piano teacher, a multi-layered story about grief, mental health and creativity that goes through a rollercoaster of emotions and is resolved with a heartbreaking twist.

Others to stand out this month are Ball Gags and Capitalists by Mark Burrow (https://www.abctales.com/story/mark-burrow/ball-gags-and-capitalists), The Man with the Camera by Alexander Moore (https://www.abctales.com/story/alexander-moore/man-camera), and another story by Itane Vero, Lie, Lie Against the Dying of the Light (https://www.abctales.com/story/itane-vero/lie-lie-against-dying-light).