-ality is a fiction journal hoping to explore, through prose, the complexity of the many simple words that define human experience: reality, sexuality, spirituality, equality, and so forth. Henry Moore said, "A sculptor is a person who is interested in the shape of things, a poet in words, a musician by sounds." By extension, -ality is interested in the shape of language where it intersects life.
As a biannual online publication, we are simultaneously freed from the constraints of paper and limited by the digital interface we have. -ality was designed for traditional prose. However, special accommodations can be made should exemplary experimental forms necessitate it. The technology is there.
-ality's Fall reading period is September 1st through December 15th. The winter reading period starts February 1st and closes April 15th. For submission guidelines, please see the About link above. We don't have any contests available at this time, though some are planned for the future.
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by M.K. Leonard
When I was a small boy, I struggled to be the well-behaved son my father required. He wanted me to be quiet and still; I needed to run and explore and do. I feared I had a machine inside me, like the one that ground wheat and corn at the mill, or like the giant wheels of a grand carriage, always clacking along cobbles, wobbling in ruts. I loved Papa and desired his approval, but I lacked the words to explain about the machine.
He would take me down the stone lane to our village church on Sundays and holy days, where my struggle to keep still was painful: anything of interest that might hold my attention and keep me in place seemed hidden by the very size of the surrounding adults. Their layers of clothing—the long, wide-sleeved cioppe, their mantles and zimarre, especially when lined with fur in winter—became oppressive walls, forcing me to look down, to tap finger rhythms on my lap, to swing my legs back and forth as I sat next to Papa in church. One Sunday, bored with my own little games, I looked straight up and was surprised to see people on the church ceiling. My father explained later that those were frescoes of saints and biblical figures. The following Sunday I studied the ceiling carefully, to be sure my father was right. Si, he was. The ceiling people in their classical costumes suggested myths ancient and wondrous. I absorbed the details, made the figures move in my mind, and kne... more