The Cenacle | 126 | Winter 2025 *Just Released*

[Cenacle]

The Cenacle | 126 | Winter 2025
https://scriptorpress.com/cenacle/126
(Size = 10.6 MB)

Hello everyone,

Here comes the just-released Cenacle | 126 | Winter 2025. This issue coming out as even more perilous times are approaching. Art will be a critical salve, tool, weapon, & path in these coming days.

This fine new issue features new poetry by Madelaine Taylah, Nathan D. Horowitz, Tamara Miles, Martina Reisz Newberry, Colin James, Judih Weinstein Haggai, & myself.

Also new fiction by Timothy Vilgiate, Algernon Beagle, & myself. And classic fiction from Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.

And new prose pieces by Sam Knot, Nathan D. Horowitz, Charlie Beyer, Jimmy Heffernan, & myself.

There is also new graphic artwork by AbandonView, Epi Rogan, Louis Staeble, Kassandra Soulard, Sam Knot, Nathan D. Horowitz, & Tamara Miles.

Contents of this new issue include:

From Soulard’s Notebooks [Excerpt]

Cruelty knows no borders.
Compassion knows none either.
Men who live by harm to others are sinners,
nothing anyone’s god needs to confirm.

* * * * * *

Feedback on Cenacle 125 [Excerpt]

Happening upon Martina Reisz Newberry’s poem “Porch” was just what I needed to cope with
the onslaught of winter. (AbandonView)

* * * * * *

From the ElectroLounge Forums:
Selections from Unknot 24, Part 3 [Excerpt]

Obliterature is the process of preparing this or making it more inviting for others, who are thus not not you. It is important to do, if you don’t, the magick might not work. It will be you, and not the demon, trapped in the book. You or the demon, it matters not, we are all you. What matters is not to stay stuck, not to be trapped, that is what this is about. (Sam Knot)

* * * * * *

Poetry by Madeleine Taylah [Excerpt]

To dream in daylight where one cannot hide from what it is they are dreaming. There is no cover of shadow. If my thoughts manifested like the light of a star then they would race past the night sky and illuminate it in its entirety. It would be daylight regardless. Gods, they fucking burn bright. The pounding. in the head. again.

* * * * * *

Notes from New England: The Great Grand Braided Narrative
[Gr. Gr. Br. N. for friendly], Part 3 [Excerpt]
by Raymond Soulard, Jr.

Maybe I will have it finished early next year, as I expect, but maybe something else entirely. Men plan. The Universe laughs. But I hope, either way, I am ever writing with all my billion stars alight in my sky.

* * * * * *

Poetry by Judih Weinstein Haggai [Excerpt]

quiet clean start
silence among trees
windless reflection

* * * * * *

Poetry by Martina Newberry [Excerpt]

The nutcase had marched himself
into our Yuletide celebrations
and stomped through our cheese plates
and the fresh cut vegetables
and our sweet desserts.

* * * * * *

God the Transformer and a Fucked-Up Tattoo (Travel Journal) [Excerpt]
by Nathan D. Horowitz

At a quarter past five, I started commiserating with a thin, middle-aged ice cream vendor who had his own reasons to be sad. He had recently brought his daughter to Ecuador to escape the violence in his hometown in the south of Colombia.

* * * * * *

Suno Cat Poems
by Nathan D. Horowitz [Excerpt]

When you’re taking a stand, where’s your cat?
When you need a friend, your cat’s where it’s at.
When you’re taking a stand, where’s your cat?
When I need a friend, my cat’s where it’s at.

* * * * * *

Lamb’s Head Soup
by Sam Knot (Prose) [Excerpt]

There is something of my faith in the blank page, such that it isn’t belief—as perhaps many might understand it—so much as an incredulity concerning that which is added. It really is more like doubt, or perhaps scepticism.

* * * * * *

Notes Toward Many Musics
by Raymond Soulard, Jr. [Excerpt]

Dreams. Creatures. Music.
We sit together & discuss these.
The floor feels soft like grass
in this Room of Song.

* * * * * *

Rivers of the Mind (A Novel) [Excerpt]
by Timothy Vilgiate

I step out from the attendant’s body. A faint smile comes to his face as he remembers a visit to Port
Aransas that he took as a child, playing on the beach with his brother and sister. He doesn’t see me as I slip out from his booth, back into the forest. I follow close behind the police car.

* * * * * *

Notes on the Bardo State
by Jimmy Heffernan [Excerpt]

The teachings on the bardo state show us both what will happen if we prepare for death, and what will happen if we do not. If we do not choose to confront and acknowledge the reality of our upcoming deaths, we will suffer tremendously in life. The sanctity of Nature that comes with knowledge of the bardo state, which uplifts and gives special meaning to our lives, is totally absent for a person who ignores, fears, or cannot come to any terms with death in this life.

* * * * * *

Poetry by Tamara Miles [Excerpt]

We don’t want to be touched
when we finally dream. In our dreams
we are always running,
running, after a shape ahead.

* * * * * *

Secret Joy Amongst These Times:
The History of Scriptor Press, 1995 to the Present [Excerpt]
by Raymond Soulard, Jr.

My Brautigan biography kept me good company; reading about his times in San Francisco in the 1950s, writing for little literary magazines not unlike The Cenacle. But also my yearn for the artistic community that produced those magazines then & there.

* * * * * *

The Hound of the Baskervilles (Classic Fiction) [Excerpt]
by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

The fact is that our friend, the baronet, begins to display a considerable interest in our fair neighbour. It is not to be wondered at, for time hangs heavily in this lonely spot to an active man like him, and she is a very fascinating and beautiful woman. There is something tropical and exotic about her which forms a singular contrast to her cool and unemotional brother. Yet he also gives the idea of hidden fires. He has certainly a very marked influence over her, for I have seen her continually glance at him as she talked as if seeking approbation for what she said. I trust that he is kind to her. There is a dry glitter in his eyes, and a firm set of his thin lips, which goes with a positive and possibly a harsh nature. You would find him an interesting study.

* * * * * *

Bags End Book #22: Uniting the Six Islands Part 1 (Fiction) [Excerpt]
by Algernon Beagle

So here we were, 1 veteran beagleboy journalist & his still pretty new rookie Apprentice, come to the Creature Common, to try to find out what had happened to make those Six Islands spook & flee each other like terrified Creatures. And maybe what it would take to unite them again.

* * * * * *

Mad Jack (Prose) [Excerpt]
by Charlie Beyer

Bob comes up the sidewalk, tripping and skipping a little, like a young child not sure where his feet are. He is more filled out, chunkier, and his pink plump face is still covered in a maniacal smile amid the graying stubble. His teeth are tiny and yellow, as if they shrank. He wears wrinkled hand-me-down clothes that don’t fit, don’t match. He looks like a bum, dressed up by a bum, for a memorial. We are at a memorial.

* * * * * *

Poetry by Colin James [Excerpt]

Somewhere there is
perfume in the air.
Flowers and superstitions,
others for other.

* * * * * *

Labyrinthine [A New Fixtion] [Excerpt]
by Raymond Soulard, Jr.

See, it’s past 3 am where I sit writing, but this scene is I’d guess late morning—like my fixtional self on this page took a different route from the one I did—I then was bound by bus & bus back to Boston—where I am—but this fixtional one has gone this way—

* * * * * *

Respond with your feedback here — or by email at editor@scriptorpress.com

Peace,
Raymond Soulard, Jr.
Scriptor Press New England
[a href="scriptorpress.com"]scriptorpress.com[/a]
editor@scriptorpress.com