Rejection letters

from Diane Smith
to ryan
date Tue, Dec 28, 2010 at 2:27 PM
subject Re: Grey Sparrow submissions

Dear Ryan,

Loved your writing--not a good fit for Grey Sparrow and please think of us again.

Best,
Diane Smith

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from upstreet
to exadore@gmail.com
date Wed, Dec 22, 2010 at 10:00 PM
subject Your submission to upstreet

Dear Ryan Boyle:

We’re sorry we can’t use "Limits of Oceans and Seas," which you submitted to upstreet number seven. We have received a great deal of work by writers who will not be included in the final selection, but certainly deserve to have their voices heard in other publications.

We wish you all the best with your writing; thank you for giving us the opportunity to read it.

The Editors

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from Hayden's Ferry Review
to exadore@gmail.com
date Fri, Dec 17, 2010 at 7:56 PM
subject Your submission to Hayden's Ferry Review


Dear Ryan Boyle:

We appreciate the opportunity to read your work, but we will not be publishing your submission, "The Oral History of Impractical Devices." We wish you luck placing your work elsewhere.

Thanks very much for your interest in HFR!

Sincerely,
The Editors

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from editor@barrierislandsreview.com
to exadore@gmail.com
date Wed, Dec 15, 2010 at 9:46 AM
subject Your submission to Barrier Islands Review

Dear Ryan,

Thank you for sending us "Limits of Oceans and Seas". We are honored that you considered our publication worthy to receive your writing. We thank you for the opportunity to read your work, but we regret that we must pass on it at this time. After receiving so many equally wonderful submissions, it becomes impossible to print them all. Thus, we must make the painful choice between them.

However, due to the caliber of your submission, we invite you to submit new work next month. We wish you the best of luck in your authorial endeavors, and we hope to hear from you again soon.

Sincerely,
Rebecca Anne Renner
Barrier Islands Review

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from awesome@pankmagazine.com
to exadore@gmail.com
date Sat, Dec 11, 2010 at 11:44 PM
subject Your submission to PANK

Dear Ryan Boyle,

Thank you for sending us "Common Feature of Mammals in Captivity".

Unfortunately, while we very much enjoyed your writing, we didn't feel it was quite right for PANK. While we respectfully ask that you wait at least one month before submitting more work for our consideration, we do encourage you to keep us in mind for future submissions.

Sincerely,
Roxane

"He had discovered that the earth itself was breathing."

Definitely a human being

Kyle Tiller found the bloody remains in a field across the road from his house. Tiller, who was 16, called us breathless on the phone saying he'd heard a loud crash and we should get there immediately because we wouldn't believe what he'd discovered. "I think it's a person," he said.

Isaac Phillips and I rushed over on his moped. Isaac was only 15 but he was already nearly six feet tall and couldn't have weighed more than 130 pounds, his limbs stretched and spindly like mosquito legs. His head was topped with curly red hair and round glasses. His clothes never seemed to fit, pant cuffs always ending before socks began, jean jackets not quite making it to his waist. The moped was no different, and seeing him ride it around town reminded one of an adult on a child's tricycle, all elbows and knees projecting at odd angles.

When we got to Tiller's, we found the body was terribly mutilated, like a piece of fruit someone had given up trying to peel—bruised flesh coming off in sheets, jagged shards of broken bone piercing through uneven holes that slowly leaked their reward. Spreading around the body was a red halo that was melting the light frosting of snow on the ground and staining the soil beneath.

"Well, that's definitely a human being," I said as the three of us looked down at it.

"No shit," said Tiller. "It's wearing a shoe." We could also make out what appeared to be a belt and a pair of pants scattered through the mess. As far as we could tell, the rest of the body was unclothed.

Isaac, standing between us, pulled a small red camera from his pocket. "I've never seen a dead person before," he said. The flash reflected off the white snow around us, painting the body in lurid tones. "Looks like it was beaten by a team of baseball bats."

"Looks like Guernica." I said.

We speculated about what could have happened to him: piranha attack, hit and hit and hit and run, swallowed a cherry bomb, stood under a landing UFO, hit by a bulldozer ... or a steamroller, spontaneous combustion, pop rocks and soda. Tiller, his arms folded across his chest, pronounced with some confidence that it was a drug deal gone wrong, that they met in the woods around here all the time, this guy had probably cut the drugs with rat poison and they had taken their revenge by crushing him under a pile of cinderblocks and dumping the body here.

We heard something crunch in the snow behind us and my heart leapt. I immediately thought about the drug dealers, their teeth gleaming, eyes shadowed, returning to the scene of the crime to dispose of evidence, to dispose of witnesses. We turned to find a cop car pulling up—almost as bad—lights turning but siren silent.

"Aw shit!" said Tiller, waving at Isaac. "Put the fucking camera away. We're caught at the scene of a drug murder."

The cop said the same thing—"Aw shit"—as he got out of his car and caught sight of a smashed ribcage splayed out like broken keys on a piano. "What the hell happened?"

I watched the planes fly overhead and wished one of them would take me to California.

"A young man dancing, swiveling his hips. He has dark hair, short and slicked up a bit. He wears an unbuttoned band-collared jacket over a shirt with bold black-and-white horizontal stripes. Behind him, on either side, are a pair of barred frames, like prison doors."

Sasha Hathaway, 1

On the morning of September 10, Sasha Hathaway woke up with blood in her mouth.

She was thirteen years and three months old and, even though she lived across the street from me, there was a lot I didn’t know about her. I did not know what she wanted to be when she grew up. I did not know which boy had kissed her at the last church youth party. I did not know what she thought of me or why I couldn’t keep my eyes off her or why she smelled like a vanilla cake all day—even after gym class. Her powers were immense.

Here is what I did know: The boy she kissed was not Billy Costers—who she had a crush on. Her favorite game was Uno and her favorite night was taco night. Her mother had left six months ago, without a goodbye. She said 'my life is over' all the time, whenever something went wrong, whenever she got a C. And I know for certain that when she woke up that morning with her mouth full of blood she didn't realize her life really might be over soon.

"I tasted something funny," she said, wrinkling her nose that morning on the way to school. "Kinda bitter. I thought I was still dreaming. But then I sat up. It spilled out of my mouth all over my pajamas and my sheets."

I wasn’t paying that much attention, I was thinking about her lips, how they seemed like they were made out of cotton and down, the stuff of bonnets and blankets, how they seemed like the softest, most delicate things imaginable, how if I could just find the nerve, just reach out and…

She spit on the sidewalk and wiped her chin with the back of hand.

I’d never seen her do anything so rude and it surprised me. "Totally gross," she said and I nodded at her. "No," she said, seeing my shocked face. She pointed at a wet red stain on the pavement. "Andy, it's still happening."

I spent the day at my desk, staring at her back—thinking about her hair, pulled back behind a headband, still the longest, prettiest hair of anyone in school, like a waterfall of ink spilling from her scalp—while she stared at Billy Costers. She seemed uncomfortable in class all day, holding a napkin to her mouth and taking frequent trips to the bathroom, but she didn’t mention the blood again.

We walked home silently after school. Her dad was waiting for her at the front door when we got home, holding the bloody pajamas in his hand. He had a worried look on his face, under the scruffy beard he started growing after Sasha’s mom left but before he was laid-off from the factory. He mostly sat around the house in plaid shirts and read conspiracy theories on the internet.

“Go home, Andy,” he said to me. He turned to Sasha, clutching the blood-stained cloth in his fist. “Is it woman problems?”

“Oh god,” said Sasha, turning bright red. “My life is over.”

“You can tell me if it is. Maybe it’s time we talking about … you know, birds. Things adults do. We can go to the lady doctor.”

“Andy,” said Sasha, without turning to me. “Go home.”

This would make great flap copy for a novel that has not yet been written: "Little fish spread their wings, pets on hormones, and the modern art detectives."

write a story about failed attempts at utopia. maybe seperate them by age, but link them by theme: the shakers, the 1960s, today.

"we're like those uncharted continents in the sky, clouds passing before the sun. we are vast and unknowable, billowing in many directions at once, capable of either drifting peacefully or exploding into great fits of grey violence. but in the end we are only mist, molecules of water that happen briefly and coincidentally to exist in the same place at the same time—but not forever. we are only mist, capable of being pulled apart, capable of disappearing completely in the face of the wrong gust of wind or the slightest change in pressure. and yes, sometimes we do get to bathe in that bright warm sun but other times, we cover it up completely."

wandering through the night while bodies disintegrate.

"The Great American Memory Hole"