Mack Devlin
Bio
Writer, educator, and follower of Christ. Passionate about social justice. Living with a disability has taught me that knowledge is strength.
We are curators of emotions, explorers of the human psyche, and custodians of the narrative.
Stories (97/0)
Morning
Morning was the hardest part of the day. Deidre rolled over in bed, her thin arm falling across the wide, cold space beside her. With Adam gone, she felt like an unfinished painting, splatters of color against a stark, empty canvas; an image without definition. She reached over to that empty space from time to time, hoping that the universe had gone against itself. There was no harm in foolish hope, at least that’s what she wanted to believe. Hoping, like dreaming, was the hammer that shaped ideals, but most ideals oxidized with time; rusted into unorganized heaps of reality.
By Mack Devlin3 years ago in Fiction
Rhythm, Imagery, and Metaphor
The free-verse poetry of Langston Hughes was at the forefront of a great cultural awakening known as the Harlem Renaissance. By writing in free verse he was able to put a strong emphasis on ideas without being constrained to a certain metrical form. His lucid imagery painted vivid portraits of life, while his use of metaphor let him be subversive without alienating his mainstream audience. It was the interplay of these three elements - imagery, metaphor, and rhythm - that defined the poetry of Langston Hughes. His unique take on poetry not only made him an icon but also completely altered the poetic form.
By Mack Devlin3 years ago in Poets
The Olden Times #1
In the olden times … There was no iced coffee at the drive-thru. Coffee was served two ways: hot and damn hot. There was cream, straight from the teat, nothing non-dairy, and sugar. The only sugar alternative was Sweet and Low. Keep the "low" part in mind because at first, you got the sweet, which was the high, but then you got the bitter, which was the low.
By Mack Devlin3 years ago in Humans
The Olden Times #3
In the olden times ... There were only two kinds of food that could be delivered: pizza and Chinese food. The Chinese food places that delivered were as unreliable as the consistency of the food they delivered. One week, the Pho Han Palace would deliver, the next week they would deny ever having delivered food in the entire history of human existence. The only guarantee you got was that your Dim Sum would be delivered by a guy on a motor scooter. And that motor scooter sounded like an atomic bomb detonating in the atmosphere as it pulled up out front. The guy didn't even have to ring the doorbell. You would be alerted by his bombastic engine and the fumes he was venting.
By Mack Devlin3 years ago in Humans
The Olden Times #2
In the olden times ... Reinventing yourself was hard work. You couldn't jump on Facebook and fabricate stories about yourself. There was no Instagram where you could show off your fabulous life - no cheap champagne in an expensive bottle on a rented yacht in the part of South Florida that vaguely resembles a tropical paradise. We would never be royals, and we knew it because we were from the suburbs. We didn't have ways of documenting our lives anyway. Sure, there were Polaroid cameras, but every pic you took on a Polaroid looked like it should be attached to your ransom note. There were film cameras, of course, but you had to take 52 shots before you could take the film out, or you'd ruin the whole damn roll. And hey, when you did reach the end of the roll, you'd drop it off at a weird little kiosk in a grocery store parking lot and pray that the stoned kid working there didn't lose your film roll or screw up the process altogether. Sometimes your pictures would end up with a ghost thumb in them, and you'd wonder if this was the product of supernatural forces. Nah, it was just a blur or a glitch in the development. There was your ghost, Scooby-Doo.
By Mack Devlin3 years ago in Humans
The Criminal Justice Process
In the United States, the criminal justice process occurs in several stages. Each of these stages contains a number of complex contingencies and procedures. Some of these procedures are so complicated that they are beyond the understanding of most laymen. Lawyers are interpreters of the law employed not only for criminal cases but also civil matters, such as lawsuits. There are two sides to every trial, the defense and the prosecution. To prove beyond a reasonable doubt that the accused is indeed guilty of the crime for which they are being tried is the job of the prosecution. Defense takes on the greater burden of refuting the evidence provided by the prosecution, usually through the cross-examination of prosecution witnesses and discrediting the prosecution’s evidence by way of expert counter-testimony.
By Mack Devlin3 years ago in Criminal
The Bumblebee
Left field. Way out. It was always where they put him, a guarantee that the only trophies he would be getting would be for participation. Sometimes they let him swing the bat, but mostly he rode the bench. Daryl didn’t much care. Baseball wasn’t his idea anyway. His mom had told him he needed to get out more, needed to make friends, needed to play outside. When he hadn’t shown initiative for any of those things, she’d signed him up for freaking baseball. He would have much rather stayed in his room playing Blood Demon, cutting his way through zombies, shooting his way through packs of hell hounds. He was almost at the final level where he would confront the Blood Demon herself in an epic battle for the ages. He didn’t blame his mom for not understanding, didn’t even blame her for signing him up for a sport he didn’t really care about. He didn’t blame her. He blamed the doctors.
By Mack Devlin3 years ago in Fiction
Edgar Wilson Moves On
Edgar Wilson had the biggest cock anyone had ever seen. He used to walk around town with it tucked under his arm. Every now and then, it would squawk and fight to break free. When that happened, Edgar would give it a good thump on the head, say “Quiet now” and the cock would calm itself, settling back against Edgar’s bulging bicep.
By Mack Devlin3 years ago in Fiction
Standing and Walking
Pain. Lots of pain. When you have a neuromuscular disorder, pain becomes a part of your daily existence. Sometimes the pain is dull, an ache in the calf, a twinge in the shoulder. Sometimes the pain is acute, a fire spreading through your entire nervous system. There is always the option to stay in bed, to stare at the ceiling fan as it goes through its rotations, simply riding out your personal misery in desperate silence. Staying in bed is an option, letting the hours tick by, watching one day roll into the next, never doing anything.
By Mack Devlin3 years ago in Humans
Runners
“He ain’t comin’ back,” Moses said. The certainty in his bother’s voice made Samuel’s stomach twitch. Squatting in the hayloft of the old barn, the two were sweating like crawdads over a cooking pot. Whole place smelled of cat piss. They’d been hiding there for two days, and Samuel had seen no sign of a cat. Maybe it too was hiding and waiting.
By Mack Devlin3 years ago in Fiction
The Cold War
In the summer of 1945, an American B-29 bomber, the Enola Gay, set a course for Hiroshima, on the southern tip of Japan’s Honshu Island. The Enola Gay, it would soon be revealed, was no ordinary bomber plane. Her mission was to deliver a payload so powerful, so violent, and so devastating, that it would forever change the course of human events. In the wake of World War II, the world would see the rise of two nuclear superpowers. The United States of America and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, known informally as the Soviet Union, would soon become locked in a ‘Cold War’ that would push the world to the brink of disaster, and the human race to the edge of extinction.
By Mack Devlin3 years ago in FYI