by Raji Singh

Our Founder, James Thaddeus “Blackjack” Fiction
‘Tell our stories, Raji. If you don’t, it will be as if we never lived.’
These whispering cries of joy and sorrow rise from the bookshelves and portraits in the Fiction House.
I cannot refuse.
(Artwork enhancements by: Joseph Rintoul)

The gods of words have decreed it: April is National Poetry Month. Here at the Fiction House we enjoy telling tales. Some are poignant. Others are just plain tall. We like mixing in a little verse with the tales now and then. Often it is flamboyant. Just as often, it is heartfelt.

Throughout April, when you stop by the Fiction House we will be reciting some of our in-house favorites, and relishing in some of the world’s classics. Here is a poem from Mark Rogers, author of Fiction House Publishing’s, Seeds of Vengeance.

*   *   *

A Collier’s Lament

From the thresholds of hell, the miners emerge.

Sluggishly, worn leather boots clapping the earth,

dragging pick, axes and flat shovels –

they leave behind in the dust any hopes for the future.

Another twelve hours in the ‘hole’;

Faces, mouths, and clothes blackened with the gritty soot.

Spirits deflated from crawling like rats underground,

burrowing through areas little wider than their pain-wracked bodies,

 emptying sharp coal chunks into finger-splitting railcars,

 hoping rotted support beams wouldn’t splinter and crush them.

©2014 Raji Singh

(Join me every Sunday night at the Fiction House, your place for short story, lark, whimsy, and merriment.  Meet the many residents as I archive their lives and centuries of adventures.  You can read of their origins in my novel TALES OF THE FICTION HOUSE.   My novel is available at Amazon, (Kindle and Trade Paperback) and Barnes and Noble.)