The indifferent sun sets and on the horizon remain all of the past regrets the world, now their domain Hooded shadows roam the night frightened children under the sheets their tiny sweaty fists clenched tight […]
Author: Erna
Erna Grcic is a writer, poet, and entrepreneur. She graduated summa cum laude and has an MA in English Language and Literature and an MBA. She's currently managing her digital marketing firm and working on a new novel inspired by ancient Slavic mythology.
A Word from the Author:
‘Literature is my work and my favourite pastime. My first literary experience had started almost thirty years ago, during a particularly bloody war, when in the basement of our heavily bombarded house, my mother read to me in the flickering light of a candle in order to pull me away from the roars and blasts that shook us every now and then and make me fall asleep. Since then, literature has become a safe haven, a source of peace and security in the midst of the everyday uproar.’ – Erna G.
Boredom
Boredom is settling in again Like a thick layer of aged dust On the topmost shelf in the library Where no one seems able to reach And disperse it Like the smooth snow on the […]
Those Dreadful Muggles
Evertree Crescent was a sickle moon of 1930s bungalows, which lay two minutes from Pagford’s main square. In number thirty-six, a house tenanted longer than any other in the street, Shirley Mollison sat, propped up against her pillows, sipping the tea that her husband had brought her. The reflection facing her in the mirrored doors of the built-in wardrobe had a misty quality, due partly to the fact that she was not wearing glasses, and partly to the soft glow cast over the room by her rose-patterned curtains. In this flattering, hazy light, the dimpled pink and white face beneath the short silver hair was cherubic.
The bedroom was just large enough to accommodate Shirley’s single bed and Howard’s double, crammed together, non-identical twins. Howard’s mattress, which still bore his prodigious imprint, was empty. The soft purr and hiss of the shower was audible from where Shirley and her rosy reflection sat facing each other, savouring the news that seemed still to effervesce in the atmosphere, like bubbling champagne.
Barry Fairbrother was dead. Snuffed out. Cut down. No event of national importance, no war, no stock-market collapse, no terrorist attack, could have sparked in Shirley the awe, the avid interest and feverish speculation that currently consumed her.
J.K. Rowling The Casual Vacancy (2012) 
After a decade or so dealing primarily with the enchanted world of Harry Potter, JK Rowling has tried her hand at something closer to home, a state-of-England novel vaguely resemblant of Margaret Drabble’s works – incorporating crime and mystery and dealing with a group of people whose lives are supposed to epitomise the state of affairs in most English households. While Harry Potter series definitely is not a clichéd children’s book where the good always wins, but a story filled with violent, unpredictable, and unfair death and failure, The Casual Vacancy seems to be the cauldron in which Rowling has tried to pour all the gloomy deprivation of the real life as well as her almost palpable desire to target a primarily adult audience. The result, lamentably, is quite depressingly clichéd and quite banal.
Faded
I’m holding this photograph, of a young woman, who looks quite like me, yet her hair is different, darker, tied up in a bun and she’s standing in a field of some now unrecognizable flowers, […]
Stung
A strange sensation, prickly and painful, under my ribs. Shortening my breath tingling underneath tightening my stomach, an unusual kind of pain, anxiety they call it, I think. I’m waiting, hoping that it will release […]
Fireworks
‘Come on, get up! Wake up, come on, it’s started again! Move! Let’s go!’
The blast shook the house. Mother pulled me out of the bed and down the stairs, clutching my sister in her arms.
Another blast.
We stopped in the stairwell. There was a short stretch of terrace we needed to run through in order to reach the cellar door. We waited, then started running between two blasts. She held me tightly behind her and shoved me inside the cellar, where another stairwell led us deep under ground, into the dark. We were already safe when we heard the third blast. My aunt appeared at the bottom of the stairs. The candle in her hand cast a shivering light entrenched in shadows. We went down. I was still dazed from sleep. Wasn’t this supposed to be over? How will I go to school tomorrow? Why did they start again? I could not ask anything out loud. Instead, I looked at the bleak expressions of the adults around me standing in a half circle around a couple of burning candles. My great-uncle met my gaze and read the fear.
Poe’s Ladies: Search for Perfection
1.0 Introduction
Throughout his work Edgar Allan Poe is guided by the idea explained in his “Philosophy of Composition” where he says that the best inspiration for the most poetical melancholy is found in “the death of a beautiful woman” and “equally it is beyond doubt that the lips best suited for such topic are those of a bereaved lover.”[1] Poe’s famous ladies, Annabel Lee, Lenore, Eleonora, Berenice, Ligeia, Morella, Madeline, are the means for his presentation of this theme in his tales and poems where, in the words of Floyd Stowall, “through loneliness, mystery and terror we are led from the idea of beauty to the idea of death, the ultimate solace for pain. This association of death and beauty accounts for nearly all that is most characteristic in Poe’s poetry.”[2]
Today
Today has been one of those days.
The thermos opened in the bag somehow.
All the papers, the wallet, the phone,
the AC remote, drenched with coffee.
Stains everywhere.
Attempted to fix it but made it worse.
Coffee dripped all over the seats,
I tried to wipe them clean
while stuck in traffic, and then just gave up.
Running late, but not worried really,
Everything can wait.
It’s one of those days.
Waiting: The Roadside Poem
I’m standing in the sand By the side of the road Leaning against the hood of my car Like an unenthusiastic prostitute Waiting for the tow truck Overwhelmed by boredom The anxiety in the pit […]
Erna Grcic 