STORY AND POEM OF THE MONTH

Story and Poem for the month of June very kindly selected by Sean McNulty:

Mirror World by Poetonahill

https://www.abctales.com/story/poetonahill/mirror-world

I am usually wary of overtly sentimental poetry.  I think it’s because I find it a very difficult thing to achieve: to write a poem, a lovely poem, a lovely sentimental poem.  It takes some skill to produce something like that without the weight of artifice hanging.  Luckily, here at ABCtales, we have many wonderful poets, who I am constantly learning from, and this one in particular stayed with me.  At first, I thought it was something I could not like.  A warm and tender ode to fathers.  Timed for Father’s Day, maybe.  Too sentimental, by my reckoning .  But fuck my reckoning:  poetry can be scary when it’s good.  This appears so simple, yet flies at you mercilessly, and won’t let you go.  A lovely sentimental poem?  I don’t believe anyone in their right mind could not love this poem for how beautifully and sadly it gives its sentiment.  It’s just right.

Operation March Hare by The Other Terrence Oblong

https://www.abctales.com/story/other-terrence-oblong/operation-march-hare-0

There are two Terrence Oblongs on ABCtales, as you probably know, both brilliant ballsy comic writers. This story was written by The Other Terrence Oblong.  Reading  Operation March Hare, I really got a sense of this writer, this Other Terrence Oblong.  This Dave Clark.  A writer of thunderous satire.  Like the best short comic fiction, it throws you into a completed world you kind of recognise for a moment, and you leave dizzy, refreshed, slightly confused, but happy.  This is a great world-building humorist.  We need more of them. More Terrence Oblongs.