Trees

Birds of Malaiseville

Spiritual Discontentment Enters Late Middle Age

An artistic collaboration between Vic Ardelle & Alice Moore, Birds of Malaiseville is, at its simplest, a collection of meditations asking after God while stuck in the Bible Belt. We’ve placed each essay inside the feathered deck below, shuffled and ruffled just to our liking.

This is, perhaps, the best way to experience the work, but if you prefer a more structured view, feel free to click the nest, where we’ve laid out the pieces as a sort of book.

However you choose to experience the words and images here, we urge you to take your time, to tread lightly as not to scare the birds into flight.

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Varsity Jesus: 1984-85

This is mostly how I remember the group and me in 1984: we talk about Jesus as brightly as we talk about Magnum P.I.

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The Mystic: A small brown bird in a sea pink blooms.

Memoir For My Father's Hair

Gray had once overtaken black, and then gray became white: the diffused color of a cataract, of milk making clouds in water.

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The Blackbird: A berry in the beak and too many to count in the bush.

The Tall Grass

God held my father’s face in His hands. This was it. “Earvin?” He said. “Earvin asked.”

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The American Crow, cawing its staple caw.

Crest of the Ilium

A bugler will play “Taps” but not “Hail to the Victors” because I lost the nerve to ask.

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The Devil: Silhouette of a diving hawk, fallen angel wings outspread.

The Triplets

Will they learn to clear tables? Be led expressionless by expressionless service dogs? Stare when a gift store visitor makes nervous conversation?

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The Robins: Mama robin feeds her screaming family of three, still a ways away from leaving the nest.

Deacon and Wife

Orange mercurochrome stains from skateboarding in culottes in those abandoned apartment complexes in Santa Clarita.

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The Mockingbird: Sun-struck, even if just for an instant.

In Which Jesus Loves AC/DC and I Try to Love the Gaither Vocal Band

I’ve gone to church for 50 years and have liked it best only when it’s over.

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The Starlings: 23rd Siege Platoon.

We Will Work in Heaven

Eternity lengthens by the infinite energy of imperfection. My father-in-law will work forever and be content with God.

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The Eastern Screech Owl: Portrait of a lunatic.

Mercy for MAGA In-laws

“He’s taking what Mr. Trump is taking!” my mother-in-law told my wife. “Don’t even,” I said.

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The Carolina Wren has it all: blue, single-family birdhouse.

The Barber's Itch: A Love Song To My Wife

I closed my eyes like blind Isaac and patted my goaty cheeks. “Esau? Is it you, Esau?”

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The Goldfinch: A branch for the feet, that look in the eye.

Thieves

Neither married nor given in marriage. That’s rich, tell her, coming from the world’s most desirable bachelor.

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The Grackle: Silhouetted in a winter wood.

Strike Anywhere Matches

Older still, I lit them off my zipper, as I’d read Jim Morrison did.

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The Grackle: Silhouetted in a winter wood.

My Wife's Next Husband

Sweet gum maples. Blossoms like muscadine grapes on the locust tree I planted in our backyard so she could see it from our kitchen.

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The Mallard, wings still parachuting it down to that part of the river where it's king.

Sis

My sister would want you to know this about her: after I came along, her debt clock began clicking and remained dynamic all her life. She was owed.

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The Mockingbird: Sun-struck, even if just for an instant.

Eternity #2: My Grandfather's Trailer Home

This long in heaven my grandfather sees limits to perfection. When the weather turns, his scars itch.

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The Sparrow leans off the spigot, hoping for a drop of industrial morning dew.

Get My Heart Together, Tom Petty Jesus

“Thank you, please, but no,” I say when offered the soup. Dead people can’t eat in dreams, so it seems best that I don’t either.

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The Peacock in full plume.

Ascension

Of the underwear band with the inside-out dashes. Of the stress-fracture walking boot and the mother outside the classroom.

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The Mystic: A small brown bird in a sea pink blooms.

Swole. Malaiseville U.

He drives a truck that looks like a fighter jet and backs it in so it’s face-first. Always flexing.

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The Red-Tailed Hawk: Perched on a fencepost in the sunset.

Four Stages of a Dead Deer in the Gilhoolys' Yard

Nothing much left to peck. Pelt. A saw-toothed spinal column. It’s a primitive heap. It looks like the invention of the bagpipe.

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The Rabbit: A vulture picks at its rotting prey.

Obituary #1: Jimmy Gunther

You and Jesus sit at a picnic bench, waiting for your name to be called: Gunther? James?

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The Killdeer: Fakes a broken wing to lure something off the nest.

1974 Almanac

Feast of Cocked Hats. Holy Smell of Train Yard. Bread of Abandonment. Bread of Troubled Gums.

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The Hummingbird: A parenthesis at the bud, in still like never in life.

Homily For the Colonel

The grackle is a walker. The robin too. Songbirds? Hoppers. Pheasants and partridge?

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The Tomcat: Our titular character balances on a branch and considers the sparrow just beyond reach.

The Devil Has Other Concerns

The Devil is no help to my marriage. He makes nicknames for the clothes my wife wears that he knows I don’t like.

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The Devil: Silhouette of a diving hawk, fallen angel wings outspread.

Planet Fitness

It’s no relief to be done with physical beauty. Some men can let go. Certain others, you and I, never stop measuring.

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The Chickens: America's gothic pair.

Memory Care

The last days of Great Bent Arrow. Old, lost Charlie Hustle. Hair as white as cocaine.

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The Red-Bellied Woodpecker: life is good, sunlit on a summer day.

Obituary #4: Older Cousin

I began the eulogy with a literal truth: she was the tallest cousin in the family. Ended it with an apocryphal one.

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The Mystic: A small brown bird in a sea pink blooms.

About

Vic Ardelle

is the pen name of a writer and professor who lives in the rural Midwest.

Alice Alexandra Moore

is a web designer and artist who hails from the backwoods of Ohio. You can find more of her work on her personal website.