Lady Churchill's Rosebud Wristlet No. 31

by Kelly Link (Editor), Gavin J Grant (Editor)

Overview

We’re almost sure this issue of LCRW is made up of more than a 100,000 letters and can guarantee that most are in the right place. Two huge stories anchor the issue, Nicole Kimberling explains that CSA means Crazy-Sexy Agriculture, and zombie hordes, vampires, cannibals, and many other ghouls tried to slip under the door. But it's not all monsters.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781618731067
Publisher:	Small Beer Press
Publication date:	11/06/2014
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	56
File size:	336 KB

About the Author

Gavin J Grant: Gavin J. Grant is the publisher of Small Beer Press.

Read an Excerpt

You Don’t Even Have a Rabbit
Jessy Randall

At first it was just something to keep her occupied while Beetz was in Arizona for a week. The software didn’t say you could use the iScreen to adjust facial expressions, but it turned out you could—or anyway Gilder discovered she could, messing around with it at work. If she brushed the tip of one of her fingers ever so lightly against the lips of an actor, she could get rid of the accidental smiles in the live comedy sketches. Or, conversely, she could add in smiles for a better blooper reel. The download numbers for the blooper reels were always higher than for the regular shows. . . .

Never Eat Crow
Goldie Goldbloom

She was three, maybe four, when they sold her. Someone bent down and put their lips on her forehead and that was goodbye. A fence all made from sticks, a willow tree, a geranium growing in a bucket. Grass mown by a horse pulling a cutter bar.

The second step from the top was always damp. Dew fell on the bleached wood from the lip of the tin roof and on summer mornings, when Soile sat there, her bare feet cringed from the cold. Cold is a killer. She was the cleaning lady; on this island, this year, every one of the visiting people used her. They said she never stole, but she did. Not small things. Large. Mattresses. Lamps. A rocking chair, a family portrait, a painted Norwegian chest that she’d carried away on her back as the owners sat picnicking under the birches, her hand hooked through one of the heavy iron handles, her head almost touching her knees. . . .

Skull and Hyssop
Kathleen Jennings

“Get out of here!” shouted Captain Moon from the door of the Helmsman’s Help. “Go on, clear off!”
As the captain’s thin, dark form lurched into the Port Fury street, several urchins fled, leaving their victim—a young woman in a blue weatherfinder jacket—to stagger in confusion. At the corner, they turned back to shout imprecations at the captain, but he ignored them. Instead, he caught the woman by the sleeve of her jacket and towed her out of the drizzling rain. In the brown tobacco-fog of the Help, he propped her up on one of the tall stools at the high table where Eliza Blancrose, with whom he had been enjoying a quiet rum and a discreet bet, waited.
“This is Eliza, journalist and travel writer for the Poorfortune Exclamation,” said Moon, beaming. Eliza, arrested in mid-sentence by the captain’s abrupt departure, doubtfully studied the new arrival before looking back at Moon. He was already a tall man—taller than Eliza—but altitude, adventure and (in Eliza’s expressed opinion) lack of feeding had attenuated him. Under Eliza’s gaze he became suddenly aware that he loomed like a crane above the stranger, and backed away. Eliza patted the woman’s hand, beneath the blue cuff of the rain-spattered jacket. “There, there,” she said, as if she doubted anything would be all right. . . .

Crazy-Sexy Agriculture = CSA
Nicole Kimberling

I think whoever invented the idea of paying a local farmer for a whole season of vegetables in advance, must have been some sort of subversive genius.
The weekly delivery of the CSA (community supported agriculture) box flies in the face of modern thinking about choice—which is that you should have it, always. Contemporary cooks are accustomed to asking the question, “What would I like to make?” and then expecting to be able to go and realize their dreams of out-of-season produce from far-flung lands at any major supermarket. The CSA puts food in front of you and says, “This is dinner. Make the most of it.”
Weekly infusions of surprise vegetables provide the ability to imagine yourself competing on some TV cooking program—or living as a subsistence farmer—whichever inspires you most. But often these same deliveries of unexpected foliage result in a sand-strewn refrigerator filled with baffling, wilted produce that you simply end up feeling guilty for not having the creative capacity to maximize. . . .

The Curator
Owen King

D, following the coup d’etat, contrived to obtain a job at the National Occult Collection. Prior to the outbreak of hostilities, she had studied library science, and harbored besides a great interest in the afterlife, whether there was something. Her brother had died young, fourteen, of a blood-borne disease. (His final words quiet but clear: “Yes, I see you. Your—face.” Whose face? He’d been nothing if not secretive, her brother, forever slipping off with his slingshot and returning flushed and vague in response to their mother’s inquiries as to where he’d been. In her memory he wore his gray school suit, bowtie and cap, drawn low, so his cool eyes were shaded, the slingshot tucked into his belt at the hip.) So, D’s gentleman friend, a lieutenant in the revolutionary brigade, made a call. What he discovered, to her disappointment, was that the National Occult Collection had been destroyed in a fire. The very night of the coup the building’s boiler had exploded—or at least, that was the assumption. There had been a fire, anyway. In the citywide chaos the fire crews had been dispersed to several more important locations and the blaze ate itself alive long before anyone noticed, leaving nothing but a smoldering brick shell. However, her lieutenant explained, eyebrows lifting hopefully, the National Museum of the Worker, next door, yet stood, and whoever had been in charge there had abandoned the post with the rest of the government rats.
D shrugged, said okay, and was summarily awarded the position of new head curator, and the keys to the building. . . .

The Necromancer of Lynka
Sarah Micklem

From Anticlimactic Folk Tales of Abigomas, collected and edited by Dr. Marcel Auerle

Ferle was the despair of her mother, who thought the girl daft. Not a lackwit, no—more of a wander-wit, who tangled the thread as she spun, and let the milk curdle and the pot boil over. She never had her mind on her duties, yet no one could say with any assurance where her mind had gone instead. As for Ferle’s stepfather, he’d begotten a child of his own, now a burly boy of three, and he’d rather not have the girl underfoot.
So the mother and stepfather agreed: the girl must go into service. They procured a place for her in the household of Necromancer Rahmik, a wealthy and respectable burgher of Lynka, the foremost town on the Isle of Abigomas. Ferle’s term of indenture was seven years, and the necromancer guaranteed that at the end of those seven years he would give her a dowry handsome enough to waft away the stench of the dead he raised in the course of his business. Seven silver coins, he promised. An enormous sum to Ferle’s mother, though a trifling sum to him. Ferle was sold, and as Ferle would in due time profit from it, her parents believed they had done well by her. . . .

Table of Contents

Fiction

Jessy Randall, “You Don’t Even Have a Rabbit”
Goldie Goldbloom, “Never Eat Crow”
Kathleen Jennings, “Skull and Hyssop”
Owen King, “The Curator”
Sarah Micklem, “The Necromancer of Lynka”

Nonfiction

Nicole Kimberling, “Crazy-Sexy Agriculture = CSA”
About the Authors

Poetry

Lesley Wheeler, “Four Poems”