Robert Nisbet is a Welsh poet whose work appears regularly in Britain where he was shortlisted for the Wordsworth Trust Prize in 2017, and in the USA, where he has twice been shortlisted for the Pushcart Prize. He lives in Haverfordwest.
Nina Rao is an audiovisual archivist with an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Arizona. She lives in Atlanta, GA, where she spends her time digitizing old VHS tapes and winding through shrunken 16mm film.
January Pearson’s work has appeared or is forthcoming in Tahoma Literary Review, 2River, Rust + Moth, Notre Dame Review, Atlanta Review, Valparaiso Poetry Review, The American Journal of Poetry, The Cape Rock Review, and other publications. She was named a finalist in The Best of the Net 2020 Anthology.
There is a long history of Gog and Magog: some say they were individuals, some say peoples, some say lands, but this is the truth and Magog would tell you the truth hurts
.Gog lived in a valley and Magog lived on a nearby mountain. They weren’t much to look at – hairy and stinking with bad teeth, but they lived mostly outside and had to hustle to stay alive. Their mates looked about the same, only they had boobies.
Gog and Magog got along fairly well, and only occasionally came to blows. Gog was jealous of the mountain, because it was cool in the summer, and Magog was jealous of the valley because it had a nice river with sweet water for drinking and bathing. Each wanted what the other had. They were, after all, men.
Every now and then Gog would climb the mountain or Magog would descend into the valley and the two would drink the fermented juice of berries. At first meeting, they were happy to see each other and discussed mundane things like how many toes does a sloth have or do birds go underground in the winter. They both felt that the fermented juice increased their intelligence, though they could not have explained this.
As they continued to drink the fermented juice, they would grow angry and begin to fight. They would slap each other on the head (they hadn’t invented fists yet), but generally did very little damage. Then they would both go home where their hairy wives would scold them by making clucking sounds, then pack mud on their cuts and bruises. They were both dense and their wives would have divorced them, but divorce hadn’t been invented yet either.
Fruit grew well in Gog’s valley, and one day he got an idea as he was eating a banana: he would bring bananas to his next meeting with Magog, and instead of slapping him on the head he would throw bananas at him from a safe distance. Magog didn’t mind this (unless the fruit hit him in the eye), because bananas didn’t grow at high altitudes and he would just eat them later. Though unintentional, Gog was sharing his food.
Then one day banana season was over and Gog decided he could also throw squash and mangoes and avocadoes. True, Magog could eat these also, but if you ever get hit with a well-thrown mango… well…it hurts!
After a particularly heavy bout of increasing their intelligence with fermented juice, Gog threw a hard winter squash at Magog and hit him in the testicles. This is always funny on You Tube, but it’s really not. No one would laugh at a woman getting smashed in the boobies. Like divorce, You Tube hadn’t been invented yet. Still, Gog fell on the ground laughing. Magog fell on the ground rolling in pain.
“Awwwwwww,” yelled Magog (vocabulary was somewhat limited then). The sound echoed over the mountain and down into the valley so that the women lifted their hairy heads and were frightened. Even Gog grew frightened. It was like the sound of birth.
Finally, Magog sat up, grabbed the first thing he saw (a rock) and flung it at Gog. It hit him in the head. “Awwwwww,” said Gog, then his eyes crossed and he fell face down in the dirt. Magog waited, but Gog did not move again.
Something had changed. Magog grabbed his mate and kids and moved to a far-off mountain to hide. He didn’t know why, he just thought it a good idea. But it didn’t do any good.
Gog’s mate and kids found his body and the killing rock and figured out what had happened. It was if something else had been launched along with the flying fruit and the rock. Maybe this is what Magog had sensed. It was in the air.
“A little yeast leaveneth the whole lump,” Magog used to say as an old and unhappy man when he drank too much fermented juice. No one knew what that meant.
Well…you know the rest: arrows and spears, slings and cannonballs, television and politicians, gain-of-function research and lawyers…La-De-Da.
The Magogites still live in the mountains and the Gogites still live in the valleys. They still drink fermented berry juice, think themselves intelligent, and throw things.
Research indicates the root word Gog translates to your last name.
Or maybe not.
True story.
Gary Wadley / Louisville, Kentucky
Gary is a Writer, Poet, Artist, Musician, Playwright who’s visual artwork has often appeared in 3W. This story recieved an Honarble Mention in our recent George Dila Memorial Flash Fiction Contest.
Terry Belew lives and writes in rural Missouri. What excites him most about poetry writing is the process and seeing a poem develop from a raw piece of emotion or snippet of thought into something meaningful.
August 2021
Glistening calm as the sun breaks over the far horizon
Not a ripple, not a wave, not a crest or movement
Faint late summer fog rising
As if the mass of water was silenced for a moment in time
Stroking easily, 18 feet of ash wings
Catch, draw, pull, catch, repeat – rhythm of movement
The sliding seat in opposition to the draw on oars
The touch of blade to water
Behind me a sweeping arch
My wake, nearly delicate, marked on each side
Parallel pools of disturbed water
Blade markers of my path, a pattern of my past
The horizon now glowing with sunlight
The stillness on the shore
Now strays into morning,
the moment has passed into a day
Richard Douglass / Tawas City, Michigan
I am 20 months beyond my wife’s death. She prepared me for her dying, but the passage of time needs nurturing if I am to fully heal. One of my tonics is sculling, a single shell with ash oars, on Tawas Bay early in the morning. It is healing, like meditation in motion. So today I put my morning’s row into words.
My mother did not save much except
money. She was not nostalgic.
There are no drawings I did in
fifth grade, no old report cards, no
favorite toys. I miss my Matchbox
and Corgi cars, my Beatles 45s
on Capitol, my old Mad Magazines
and Ripley’s Believe it or Not
paperbacks. All gone to garbage
trucks or garage sales. She handed
little down. I have a couple of my
father’s WWII medals, but none
of his letters home. My mother gave
my wife her string of pearls. It is
this one gift I want to talk about.
Tight with money her entire life she
was overly generous at the end. My
wife and I don’t go out much. We
don’t entertain. But there was an event
where we dressed up, a speech I
had to make. I found my old suit,
purchased at the Salvation Army to
get married in. My wife wore a simple
black dress and upon the breast she
laid that single strand of pearls.
They were like small lights, like prayer
beads, like dreamstuff. They were like
my mother, simple, surviving, hanging on.
Corey Mesler / Memphis, Tennessee
COREY MESLER has been published in numerous anthologies and journals including Poetry, Gargoyle, Five Points, Good Poems American Places, and New Stories from the South. He has published eleven novels, four short story collections, six full-length poetry collections, and a dozen chapbooks. His novel, Memphis Movie, attracted kind words from Ann Beattie, Peter Coyote, and William Hjorstberg, among others. He’s been nominated for the Pushcart many times, and three of his poems were chosen for Garrison Keillor’s Writer’s Almanac. He also wrote the screenplay for We Go On, which won The Memphis Film Prize in 2017. With his wife he runs a 144 year-old bookstore in Memphis.
Third Wednesday contributor Buff Whitman-Bradley’s new book, At the Driveway Guitar Sale: Poems on Aging, Memory, Mortality, is available from Main Street Rag Publishing Company. A few of the poems in the book were originally published in Third Wednesday. He podcasts at thirdactpoems.podbean.com
Click the YouTube link for a video of Buff reading from his book.
At the Driveway Guitar Sale can be puchased from Main Street Rag.
I’ve read this author in many publications over the years, and listened to his own gently cadenced readings on his podcast, and I love his poetry. Wit, imagination, a perfect ear, and an effortless touch (not to mention knee-slapping punchlines) mark all of Whitman-Bradley’s work, and the poems in this book are no different. The poet is forgivingly and unforgivingly self-aware, somehow finding all the poetry in life’s least poetic moments. ~Roger Stoll, essayist and poet
For all of us, even though we may continue to climb stairs and eat our vegetables, the ever-expanding past continues to nip at our heels. Buff Whitman-Bradley reminds us in these poems that we are not alone, that we participate in a common project with its pitfalls and distractions. He calls attention to the gifts and graces that accompany a seasoned perspective, and that there is a special liveliness and wise humor that comes with age that is both balm and elixir. ~Gary Crounse
With his signature grace and economy, Buff Whitman-Bradley tackles the unimaginable; the body’s elemental breakdown and the proverbial leap into the unknown which awaits us all. Never settling for abstraction or platitude, these poems are as rugged and beautiful as the California landscapes humming in the background. And though he may have given up on his plan ‘to be an ancient Chinese poet’, something of their wild humor and gem-like clarity shines on every page. ~Seth Jani, Publisher and Editor of Seven CirclePress, Author of Night Fable
Tidy up
A Zen master of my acquaintance
Once said that when he died
He wished to leave no trace.
All the backpackers I know
Say the same
About their sojourns in the wild.
No messes, no unfinished business.
It’s a good idea to tidy up
Before all of our little departures
And our impending Big One –
Douse the coals, strew the ashes,
Bag any food scraps,
Bits of paper, foil and cardboard,
Erase all footprints,
Be forthright, apologize, forgive –
So that what remains of us in memory
Is not a squalid little campsite
Full of trash and debris
And tangled disputes
That will cause great consternation
Or anguish
To those left behind,
But is instead
An expanse of mountain grasses
Beside a high cold tarn
Where ones who loved us
Might like to pass a little time,
Pitch a tent,
Build a fire.
From the summer issue of 3rd Wednesday: “Two In the Morning” (Painting).
Patricia Bingham / Pocatello, Idaho
3rd Wednesday’s poem of the week:
Third Wednesday Magazine 