Rejection Rejected

By Kerr Pelto

Dorene sat at the thrift store desk crammed in one corner of her slipshod apartment and lit the stub of her last cigarette. Grasping a knife, she slit open the envelope and hastily unfolded the letter.

Dear Ms. Hicks, We regret . . .

Dorene mangled the cigarette in her overcrowded ashtray, plunged her homemade stamp onto the inkpad, and banged it onto the letter, tossing it atop her pile of past rejections. The blood-red word REJECTED satiated her anger. 

Caressing her unbound manuscript like a paramour, she rasped, “What do they know, love? I reject them.

Rejection Ink

By Lauren Wesley-Smith

Welcome to Rejection Ink, where we take your pain and make it into something beautiful.

The rejected novelist lets his words be printed on his skin instead of paper, deep ink flowing outward. 

The painter bleeds in colour. 

The bankrupt financier has numbers over his fingers, trying to conjure the magic back.

If you’ve found our shop, you must be feeling life’s sharp edges– but all suffering should be productive, no? 

Let that sting become the tattoo artist’s needle, and watch what beautiful flowers bloom upon the skin.

So, how can we make your pain beautiful?

Things I Couldn’t Say

By Finnian Burnett

What I meant to say was the celestial pattern of scars on my legs weighs them down and I walk through quicksand while you jog and what I meant to say was the ponderous sway of my stomach grows grotesque next to your lithe frame and what I wanted to say was my mother says they don’t make wedding dresses in size gargantuan and what I didn’t say was your best friend oinks when you’re not there and what I couldn’t say was the ring you’re holding hasn’t a chance of fitting my fat fingers, so instead, I say no. 

Powderpuff Snowflake

By Tony Litchfield

Powderpuff Snowflake, wrapped in an ego as fragile as fine porcelain, could never ride a landing craft, bucking and weaving, the smell of fear and puke heavy in the morning air, plunging towards the beaches of Normandy. He has been upset by words, poor dear, feeling rejected because the world does not revolve around him and his needs. A baby in a man’s body, crying for his mamma,

With an identity crisis to boot. Give me Jim Bowie and the Alamo any day, for when you step over the line you find out who you really are.

Boy, Spurned

By Mairibeth MacMillan

They hold hands as they swing, gazing at each other with gap-toothed smiles. 

“Watch me!” 

He climbs to the top of the slide, launching himself headfirst. Grins at her all the way down then runs off to pick a daisy, puts it behind his back and saunters towards her.

Three sly girls whisper on the roundabout. She glances at them, then at the approaching boy. He holds out the flower, a sweet smile on his lips. She slaps it from his hand amidst their sniggering, runs away. 

He clenches his fists, grinds the daisy into the dirt with his shoe.

Unfortunately, your story was not chosen as a finalist.

By Joyce Bingham

Not life threatening, a mere tremor in the region of my heart. I’ve created these words, each pondered over, sculptured, honed, chosen. The rhythm read aloud in the silence of this room. Commas checked for their correct use, a pause, a break. Sentences left luscious, long. Or short. Matured in a sleeping silk cocoon within the ethereal cloud. Until I strip it back to reveal the delicate resonance of its structure. 

We received an overwhelming number of entries and had to pass on a lot of quality work.

Tuck it back into the chamber of dreams, for loving, shaping, later. 

Spirit Vinegar

By Beatrice Hussain

An unforeseen sequela coughed up a Seathwaite shrew,

Too bitter to be eaten, wind threw a sand lasso,

Tears drowned her eyes of sea coal, her lips turned tantrum blue.

Brittle stars of winter populated online forms

With scattered bits of debris, like a strandline after storms.

Clapped out through the corridor lined with uniforms,

The utter gall of her death postponed smothered her in quilt,

And dragged her life-wards from the brink, mortgaged to the hilt.

Bare feet touched seaweed heartstrings, now she wasn’t going to die; 

The mirror of the wet sound held a mermaid’s creel of sky.

Not Better, Just Different

By Robert Woods

I know I won’t have made it, but still I check.

It’s my writing style – there’s too much description. Or maybe it’s the themes I focus on. Granted they’re not for everyone, but shouldn’t my talent still shine through?

Names on the longlist scroll by. Names of authors that have led different lives to me, their stories so radically different to mine. 

Not better, just different.

But different enough to not even make the longlist?

Disappointment, self-pity, frustration. It’s all settled in by the time I reach the bottom.

I know I didn’t miss my name, but still I check.

Applause

By Sarah Kelleher

My name is an echo of memory, microphoned over heads. The hall claps. I’m eighteen, giddy with freedom and loss, and now hubris, because it’s me, I’m Dux. My name was a cue. I rise alone, applauded; cold air in the aisle, cold air at my back. I jog up steps. I walk hallow wood, a thousand feet tall. I scan faces, now desperate.

I spot her: a miniature significance, my pale mother, eyes rheumy with withdrawal. But my steps slow. She is Truth. She is Reality, the measurement of me, with her averted stare. Her indifference.

The Results

By Sally Tate

Dear Sophie (Sophia? Susan?),

Thank you for entering the Nature Poetry Competition (and paying the exorbitant fee).

We received over a thousand entries from across the globe (middle aged female gardeners are everywhere these days)!

Unfortunately your entry was not selected (and you’re probably not surprised) as one of our finalists.

Congratulations to the winners (whose names will be lost to history) and commiserations to everybody else (whose names will be lost to history).

We hope you enter again next year (although god knows what these judges reward),

Yours Sincerely (and somewhat distracted by flames in the yard),

The Maglexito Team.

                                     
The group chose ‘Things I Couldn’t Say’ as their winner! Congratulations, Finnian Burnett!