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    They Say the Sirens Left the Seas
    They Say the Sirens Left the Seas
    They Say the Sirens Left the Seas
    Ebook86 pages43 minutes

    They Say the Sirens Left the Seas

    By James Hutchings

    ()

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    About this ebook

    The last dragon faces his death...

    A magician bases his life on a misheard word...

    A teenager goes looking for his friends' girlfriends, none of whom have ever been seen...

    46 poems by James Hutchings.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherJames Hutchings
    Release dateMay 26, 2014
    ISBN9781310745331
    They Say the Sirens Left the Seas
    Author

    James Hutchings

    James Hutchings lives in Melbourne, Australia. His work has appeared in Daily Science Fiction, Enchanted Conversation and fiction365 among other markets.

    Read more from James Hutchings

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      Book preview

      They Say the Sirens Left the Seas - James Hutchings

      They Say the Sirens Left the Seas

      Published by James Hutchings at Smashwords

      Copyright 2014 James Hutchings

      ++++

      Dedicated to Heather: editor and muse.

      Thanks also to Nadia for her reading and criticism.

      CONTENTS

      Acknowledgments

      The Ship In the Clouds

      Automation

      The Cat and the Toad

      untitled (One empty day the Muse declined to guide me...)

      How the Trolls Were Driven From Telelee

      The Weather Here Is Like a Happy Drunk

      She Was, If I Were Forced to Guess

      The Death of Pan

      Epitaph (I worked on a construction site...)

      The Rat Beneath My House

      The Idol

      Saranac Prison

      The Lamb

      How the Ape Got Its Frown

      I Dreamt I Died and Went to Hell

      Short Mohawks

      Once a Bird Going East Met a Bird Going West

      Though None Are Born With Whip In Hand

      untitled (If every word that any human hand...)

      They Say the Sirens Left the Seas

      The Doom of Agnar Haakonsson

      Irreconcilable Differences

      The Place of Dogs

      The Prettiest Girl in the School

      A Cold Wind Off the Sea

      The Assignation (based on the story of the same name by Lord Dunsany)

      untitled (I met my cat's unblinking stare...)

      The Magician

      Angel Square

      Epitaph for Reza Barati

      The First Verse of Bon Jovi's 'You Give Love a Bad Name' as a Shakespearean Sonnet

      untitled (Once a ship sailed out alone...)

      Bountiful, Wyoming

      untitled (I'm a pro at online dating...)

      Yashub-Geb

      I Love You Like a Corpse Inside a Crypt

      untitled (Philosophers of ancient times were clear...)

      The Trials of Jenny Brown

      A Cool and Green and Downward-Sloping Path

      Maturity

      I Was Walking Through Wasteground One Evening (Based on the folk story 'The King of the Cats')

      untitled (The blacks were homeless....)

      Two Towns Away

      Time and the Tradesman (based on the story of the same name by Lord Dunsany)

      Epitaph (The world decreed...)

      Cats At Night (Inspired by 'The Cats of Ulthar' by H.P. Lovecraft)

      Creative Commons license

      contacting me

      ++++

      Acknowledgments

      'Angel Square' and 'She Was, If I Were Forced to Guess' originally appeared in Barnwood.

      'The Ship In the Clouds' and 'Yashub-Geb' originally appeared in Heroic Fantasy Quarterly.

      'The Assignation' originally appeared in New Myths.

      'The Cat and the Toad' originally appeared in Polu Texni.

      'Bountiful, Wyoming' originally appeared in Punchnel's.

      'Time and the Tradesman' originally appeared in Silver Blade.

      'A Cool and Dark and Downward-Sloping Path', 'The Death of Pan', 'The First Verse of Bon Jovi's You Give Love a Bad Name as a Shakespearean Sonnet', 'Saranac Prison' and 'They Say the Sirens Left the Seas' originally appeared in Strong Verse.

      'The Prettiest Girl in the School' and 'The Rat Beneath My House' originally appeared in Visions With Voices.

      'How the Ape Got Its Frown', 'Irreconcilable Differences', 'I Was Walking Through Wasteground One Evening' and 'Once a Bird Going East Met a Bird Going West' originally appeared in Wisdom Crieth Without.

      (back to contents)

      ++++

      The Ship In the Clouds

      I was walking alone on a wet stretch of stone

      that the guidebook had claimed was a beach

      and the sea was as gray as my spirits that day

      and I sighed as if robbed of my speech.

      And it seemed as I sighed that the world must have died

      for the sea and the stones and the hills

      had been wrapped in a shroud of the heaviest cloud

      and lay cold, and unspeaking, and still.

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