Ghostly Demarcations: Stories

Fiction. Everyone is constantly admonishing our narrator to keep quiet: "You're full of bull hockey, college boy...Shut up and drink your beer." Or, "'Shut up,' Michelle replied. 'Shut up,' Michelle repeated." Or, "Don't look up. At least don't shout anything when you do. She's here, on the balcony." Or, "'Shit.' Sarah spit this out like a too-hot cinnamon ball, pulled me off the dental chair, and led me to the closet with the skeleton, shushing me with her fingers." Or, "Hush, be still. Tacete, tacete." Everyone admonishes him, when all he wants to do is shout the wonders, the horrors, the terrors that he and his older adoptive brother Galen face as one spiritual incursion after another manifests in their lives, moving from trickster poltergeists to forlornly wandering ghosts to intent fetches to avenging revenants. Perhaps, instead of admonishing him, everyone would do better to heed his early, youthful deliberation: "I never heard his voice again after that night. If we humans could always recognize the last words we were ever to hear from each person we knew or even met, our lives would perch as fragile indeed, gathering tragedy every listening moment to lean over a dark cellar, of dark farewells."

From the Back Cover

Praise for other books by Joe Taylor:OLDCAT & MS. PUSS: "You'll note the originality of every page but perhaps see the ghosts of Ambrose Bierce, Mark Twain, Ogden Nash smiling with approval over Mr. Taylor's shoulder . . . and of course the Jabberwocky thrashing his tail." --Eugene Walter.THE THEORETICS OF LOVE (forthcoming) "Joe Taylor is a quirky genius of a story teller. In vivid, beautiful language--sometimes erudite, sometimes edgy--he tells of eccentric characters who are in search for the genuine." --Anthony Grooms (BOMBINGHAM, THE VAIN CONVERSATION)THE THEORETICS OF LOVE (forthcoming) "Read this novel and know that it comes from a wild writer from Alabama with no limits on his imaginative and linguistic powers." --Brad Watson (THE HEAVEN OF MERCURY, MISS JANE: A NOVEL)

About the Author

Joe Taylor is the author of the novels PINEAPPLE, Oldcat & Ms. Puss: A Book of Days for You and Me and LET THERE BE LITE, OR, HOW I CAME TO KNOW AND LOVE GöDEL'S INCOMPLETENESS PROOF, as well as this book of stories, GHOSTLY DEMARCATIONS. He has a novel forthcoming this Fall from New South Books, entitled, The Theoretics of Love. He is the director of Livingston Press at the University of West Alabama.He also has a second comic novel in verse coming out in late Spring from Sagging Meniscus Press, entitled Back to the Wine Jug.

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