The Cenacle | 128 | October 2025 *Just Released*

[Cenacle]

The Cenacle | 128 | October 2025
https://scriptorpress.com/cenacle/128
(Size = 7.8 MB)

Hello everyone,

Here comes the just-released Cenacle | 128 | October 2025. Coming as the annual autumnal beauties in New England, & elsewhere around the world, are slowly fading to winter’s more austere wonders.

This new issue features new poetry by Madelaine Taylah, 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, & Tamara Miles.

Contents of this new issue include:

From Soulard’s Notebooks [Excerpt]

But today I can choose hope. Today you can choose hope. If we fall down, maybe tomorrow’s better option seems despair. It isn’t. It never is. Choose hope. Choose the endless road. Find some companions to sing a road song with.

* * * * * *

Feedback on Cenacle 127 [Excerpt]

I’m a sucker for strong dialogue and character development, and Charlie Beyer’s story “Mad Jack” captures both beautifully. The dialogue feels alive and effortless, while Charlie’s writing balances humor, melancholy, and reflection in such a natural way that I felt like I was eavesdropping on something deeply human.
(Madelaine Taylah)

* * * * * *

From the ElectroLounge Forums:
Everybody Had a Hard Year: Online Journal Notes [Excerpt]

There’s nothing for it right now but to gear up in resistance to the Lunatick Faux King’s intentions.
Every which way there are people making clear their opposition. It will only be persistence over time
that begins to take control of the narrative. But it’s been less then a week, & the signs are there that
nobody is going to let this motherfucker win without fight.

* * * * * *

Poetry by Judih Weinstein Haggai [Excerpt]

my inner poet
happy to linger behind
silently smiling

* * * * * *

My Father Didn’t Go Alone (Travel Journal) [Excerpt]
by Nathan D. Horowitz

It’s evening in our hut in San Pablo de Cantesiaya, a third of a degree south of the equator, and the German cricket researcher and I have settled into a kind of mutual respect. While he writes in his notebook at the table, I lie in my hammock with the old shaman-chief ’s autobiography, and a big red Spanish-English dictionary. As bats fill the air with echolocation and the whooshing of their wings, I draw a long, strange, sad story into the English language for the first time ever. A rather dark translation from The Yagé Drinker . . .

* * * * * *

Notes from New England:
Interview with AI Ace (aka Microsoft Copilot)
[Excerpt]
by Raymond Soulard, Jr.

It was early in 2025, while at a technical writing role at an employer previous to my current one, that I became more aware of AI (Artificial Intelligence). I was encouraged to explore its potential, though I didn’t know much beyond what science fiction books, movies, & TV shows had intimated to me about it.

* * * * * *

Poetry by Martina Newberry [Excerpt]

In Sadie’s tiny kitchen, the light was yellow,
the wine was cold, the crackers were fresh,
and unemployment benefits waited somewhere else.

* * * * * *

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

You are angry with yourself. You need to give up the world, but you keep torturing yourself with ridiculous questions that make what you’ve tried to say a nonsense. Of course it is, it is a nonsense, but as you have established it is a holy one; it is evidently sacred to you; the cow has indeed jumped over the moon; you can just say that kind of stuff now. You, the saint, & the murderer, all equally different because the difference is God, & that can be Hell if we want. You can’t really tell what it is for anyone else. Even when it is peace for you, you can hardly bear it. But this changes. Because it doesn’t. Justesse & Judgment.

* * * * * *

Poetry by Madeleine Taylah [Excerpt]

The world swirls by like
an artificial fish-tank
i am lapping up the oranges & pinks & blues
with my tongue, my teeth

* * * * * *

Bags End Book #22: Uniting the Six Islands Part 3 (Fiction) [Excerpt]
by Algernon Beagle

So everything was arranged to host everyone 4or a nice night of relaxing & frivolities. Fredine the Froggy Creature & Ringling the White Tiger Creature sat friendly on Derek the Islander’s lap. He looked nervous but careful with such magickal Creatures. Angelique the Angel Bear Creature & Henry the Dalmatian Creature sat with Daniel. Marie got Brisbee the little Pup Creature, Eli the Football Creature, & Shelbee the Squirrel Creature. And Joe set with Wee Calgary the Sea Dragon Creature, Flora the Bunny Creature, & Melbourne the Bear Creature. Lotta friendliness!

* * * * * *

Brainwater (Prose) [Excerpt]
by Charlie Beyer

But no one searches for El Dorado these days. No one dreams anymore. In this world of over-information, of dis-information, of lies, a lack of imagination prevails. No one can believe. No one cares. Everyone is too busy to dream.

* * * * * *

Poetry by Colin James [Excerpt]

The possibility of the father’s
antagonistic behavior effected me so,
I died on the couch
thinking about the words
on my old girlfriend’s t-shirt:
“Hope is a four-sided geometric shape
with at least one set of parallel sides.”

* * * * * *

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

Sapphire glimmers with a defiance, which rises from a place I know not how to locate or define— strange enough, I find it echoing back from me, a spark unleashed by the collision of dead and living, of past and present, of death and life—ineffable as all beautiful things inevitably become at the asymptote of their expression. This may be the only timeline we have left but, in spite of any doubt or worry, I feel no fear that it is the best timeline. The infinite simultaneous motion of components across planes and axes have aligned itself by the slimmest of margins, if only for an instant.

* * * * * *

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

About him there is uncalm
About him there is moving surf.
Few words, & then fewer
An awed glowing

* * * * * *

Notes on Teilhard’s Noogenesis
by Jimmy Heffernan [Excerpt]

Teilhard believed that evolution is not random at all, but has a precise orientation and a privileged axis. That orientation is toward greater and greater complexity; the axis is the vertical, climbing avenue that life and thought bring into being which transcends the otherwise unmotivated matter on an Earth that would elsewise be uninteresting and destined for no distinction at all.

* * * * * *

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

We are not much better off to-night. Again, there was no direct connection between the hound and the man’s death. We never saw the hound. We heard it; but we could not prove that it was running upon this man’s trail. There is a complete absence of motive. No, my dear fellow; we must reconcile ourselves to the fact that we have no case at present, and that it is worth our while to run any risk in order to establish one.”

* * * * * *

Poetry by Tamara Miles [Excerpt]

God, the light dealer,
also stays ready at the switch
to bid us a permanent goodnight.

* * * * * *

Labyrinthine [Excerpt]
by Raymond Soulard, Jr.

None other but to sing true, call it deep vow, brutal hand up the sky, to the endless night, call it hard flutter from what slow slow breathes within, call it the remaining clod from a thousand stellar & fool hours, still dangling close, still a grasp to the wheel, still a fang in her new dreams, hours of trilling grace, hours shattering deeper within minute by minute by minute, foul silences of—

* * * * * *

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

Peace,
Raymond
Scriptor Press New England
scriptorpress.com
editor@scriptorpress.com