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Candy

By Angela Doll CarlsonCandy was hiding in the garage. I didn’t see him go in there, but Martha said he was headed there when the meteor struck, so I suppose that’s where he is now. I told Martha that we needed to wait a while before we could go out and check. I saw that in a movie once. I don’t expect that we’ll start seeing dead folks come back to life or anything like that, but the part about radiation from space seems like a legitimate concern. Even my high school science classes covered that...
FICTION on the WEB short stories •

Cash by Angela Doll Carlson

This story contains huge amounts of information; family profiles, finance, property, property-renovation. Once that was out of the way I felt free to feel the effects of the tension build which I would have liked to have felt earlier as the backstory of Penny and family are explained. The fantasy about the fugitive is an ingenious tool which (pre-denouement) aids and abets tension. I would have actually liked the story to end with a further fantasy about the robber (post-denouement). It would ha...
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Eunoia Review •

Born Again at Lake Ontario

By now I imagine you’ve heard the gossip. God knows between Jenny at the salon and Martha Crenshaw at the Bible Study; it’s already all over town. It was clear as day when I went into the bank this morning to make a deposit. I usually say a quick hello to Frank at the door, and he always returns a nice polite, “Good morning, Mrs. Stack,” but today, he had a look on his face. You know that look. It’s the look that says, “I heard something about you, and I’m both shocked and intrigued.” Oh, come o...
Apple Podcasts •

The Wilderness Journal

I do not listen to many podcasts, so the ones I choose to listen to have to be exceptional. The Wilderness Journal is indeed exceptional. I think one of the reasons I love this podcast so much is because it is genuine, real, and relatable. For example, her "Why Worry?" podcast, which I have listened to twice now, feels like a conversation I would have with one of my closest friends. The topic is talked about from not only an Orthodox perspective, but a flawed humanity perspective - but it do...
SoundCloud •

Angela Doll Carlson, Fire Juggling

Angela Doll Carlson is a poet, fiction writer, and essayist. You can find her on all things social media as @mrsmetaphor.

Almost every day I drive past MSA Circus Arts on my way home. It is two blocks from my house. I always intended to take a class there, but almost five years later, I never have done so. One day while passing the building, I wondered what was stopping me and this line pushed into my head, “next time, it’ll be fire juggling.” I went home and wrote this story— About a woman in...
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Abbey of the Arts •

Monk in the World guest post: Angela Doll Carlson | Abbey of the Arts

Another wonderful submission for the Monk in the World guest post series from the community. Read on for Angela Doll Carlson’s wisdom on living as a monk in the world:

11:11

A number of years ago I took a silent retreat at the Abbey at Gethsemane near Bowling Green, Kentucky. At that time of my life my four children were still very young. I was burned out and overwhelmed.  The trip to the monastery was rest and nurturing. I remember the lush grounds and the quiet early morning chanting. I reme...
Sojourners •

A Prayer: For Those of Us With Souls Still Under Construction

Editor’s Note: June 9 is St. Ephrem the Syrian’s date of death. His feast day is celebrated on different days by different churches. O Lord and Master of my life, take from me the spirit of … what? Sloth, yes. Sloth, lust, something, and idle talk, something, something and idle talk. I am driving down Western Avenue in Chicago trying to remember a prayer by heart. I drive this way most days. It’s a speedy through-route to points of interest south of me. Northbound, however, is a nightmare, ev...
Sojourners •

Making Space for Silence

Editor's Note: The feast of St. Isidora is celebrated on May 1 in the Eastern Orthodox Church and Roman Catholic Church. When I am alone, and everything is quiet, I feel the weight of the holy pressing in like a warm comforter tucked up tight around me. When I am alone in this quiet, God feels so close, so tangible — so present. But I am rarely alone, rarely surrounded by quiet. Living in the city, parenting, partnering, working — all these things ensure noise and clatter and cluttered places....
ADDitude •

How to Float — and Other Impossibly Hard Lessons for Parents

When I was very young I nearly drowned, or at least that is the story I tell myself. I was taking swim lessons at the high school down the road from our house. I was in kindergarten. I bounced into the deep end of the pool when the teacher wasn’t looking. From under the water I heard my mother yell, “Somebody GET her!” I was grabbed under the armpits, raced to the edge of the pool and handed up to another instructor. I was panicked, but unharmed.
Even so, I don’t care much for swimming. I know t...
Art House America •

Why Poetry Matters, Even Now — Art House America

Truth shines the brighter clad in verse. —Jonathan Swift Photograph by Angela Doll CarlsonThere is some awful poetry in the world. There is some awful poetry just as there is some awful photography, some awful construction, and some awful cuisine. Sometimes, exposure to one awful version of a thing at just the right time can sour a person to it. My son was 8 when he turned against salmon. He’d eaten it with all kinds of gusto for a while, then one day he got a bad piece of fish. Whether it was t...
Split Lip Magazine •

Little Mouse — Split Lip Magazine

You probably remember it different. You probably remember the sun being so hot we had to close the shades in the middle of the day—that the AC couldn’t keep up, that the floors were sticky. The pizza ovens didn’t help. You probably remember it was the hottest day on record.Montego was on the ovens and I was doing prep. Claudia said her face was melting off, and it was. Her eyeliner had run down below her eyes, almost to her cheekbones, which you said were high and proud. You wanted to punch thos...
Art House America •

Harvesting Air — Art House America

Write about your sorrows, your wishes, your passing thoughts,  your belief in anything beautiful.  —Ranier Marie Rilke, “Letters to a Young Poet”
Nothing so becomes a Church as silence and good order. Noise belongs to theatres, and baths, and public processions, and market-places: but where doctrines, and such doctrines, are the subject of teaching, there should be stillness, and quiet, and calm reflection, and a haven of much repose. —St. John Chrysostom
There is a wind farm on either side of...
Art House America •

Garden in the East — Art House America

There is an oak tree in the middle of a field on our property in Tennessee. It rises from a stand of long prairie grasses native to that region. At one time, that field was a pasture for horses. Perhaps there was once a barn there. We find old rusty horseshoes in the dirt from time to time. We find nails, bits of board or leather from the straps of saddles. Wildflowers now populate the place around that tree—Spring Cress, Coneflower, Southern Blazing Star. In the spring, the tree is surrounded b...
Art House America •

Easter People — Art House America

Photograph by Angela Doll Carlson
We are Easter people living in a Good Friday world.—Barbara Johnson
It is the ashes that come to mind first. I remember the weight of Father Boyle’s thumb pressed to my forehead making the sign of the cross there. I remember the gritty feel, like chalk, like dust, the charred leftover palms from the previous year’s Palm Sunday fashioned into a cross on my tender young skin. From my seat in the pew I would watch, and I would wonder where those palms had been stor...
Art House America •

The Secret Body — Art House America

Body is something you need in order to stayon this planet and you only get one.And no matter which one you get, it will notbe satisfactory. It will not be beautifulenough, it will not be fast enough, it willnot keep on for days at a time, but willpull you down into a sleepy swamp anddemand apples and coffee and chocolate cake.—Joyce Sutphen, “Living in the Body”
In my best moments, I am grateful to be walking around, upright and active. In those moments, I am not noticing the forward jut of my h...
Art House America •

Lessons in Shiplap — Art House America

I know my tendency to procrastinate is out of control, and maybe binge-watching all the episodes of Fixer Upper on Netflix is a problem. Let's face it: it could be worse. I promise that despite my chronic procrastinating by watching Chip and Joanna Gaines hour after hour while my list of “things to do” languishes on the desktop has not completely unraveled the fabric of my household . . . yet. 
My husband can't understand what it is about these house rehab shows, particularly Fixer Upper, that I...
Art House America •

In the Blood of Eden: Reflections on Paradise Lost — Art House America

Oh Man’s first disobedience, and the fruitOf that forbidden tree whose mortal tasteBrought death into the world, and all our woeWith loss of Eden.… (John Milton, Paradise Lost 1.1–4)
I don’t blame Eve. I would have eaten that apple. I know that voice in the garden, that stirring inside, that reaching for something more, that question forever hanging before me: “What is missing?” I would have eaten that apple if only to escape the daily tasks of pruning and digging in the garden, the constant bli...
Elephant Journal •

Better Answers to “What do You Do?” | elephant journal

I thought for a long time that I hated it because I didn’t have a solid, ready answer handy. I thought that perhaps if I had become a podiatrist or a tree surgeon this would be a simple fix. I always thought it must be nice to be able to say, “I’m a nuclear physicist” or “I’m a city bus driver.”
As it stands, I don’t have that sort of title to throw around. I do a lot of things. It’s complicated. When I try to explain that I’m a parent, personal trainer and writer I’m met with radio silence.
Com...
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