The Emperor Under The Sun

By Victoria McCullough

:"The Emperor Under The Sun" is the newest piece from Victoria McCullough. It is a labor of love, a carnival of far away sheep, it is current. This is a serious piece dealing with a dedication to a deceased love one. The twist? It is purely reality-based fiction.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lulu.com
• Release date: May 21, 2023
• ISBN: 9781312544802

Book preview

THE EMPEROR UNDER THE SUN

by Victoria McCullough

Copyright 2022 by Victoria McCullough

All rights reserved.  No part of this book may be

reproduced, stored in retrieval system or transmitted

in any form or by any means without the prior written

permission of the author, except by a reviewer who may

quote brief passages in a review to be printed in a

newspaper, magazine, or journal.

First Printing

All characters in this book are fictitious, and any

resemblance to real persons, living or dead is

coincidental.

ISBN: 978-1-312-54480-2

Published with Lulu Press

www.lulu.com

Dedicated to the memory of a boy named Ralph

The Emperor Of Ice Cream

By Wallace Stevens

Call the roller of big cigars,

the muscular one, and bid him whip

in kitchen cups concupiscent curds.

Let the wenches dawdle in such dress

as they are used to wear, and let the boys

bring flowers in last month’s newspapers.

Let be be the finale of seem.

The only emperor is the emperor of ice cream.

Take from the dresser of deal,

lacking the three glass knobs, that sheet

on which she embroidered fantails once

and spread it so as to cover her face.

If her horny feet protrude, they come

to show how cold she is, and dumb.

Let the lamp affix its beam.

The only emperor is the emperor of ice cream.

Facts And Rumors Concerning The Succession

by Michael Wurster

1.

On his knees,

his back to us:

thus was the mystery kept.

Pale melons danced

for the camera,

slowly inflated,

romance of the night.

I read and reread

the tenacity of the boudoir,

timid as if he had only one way,

the swirl and squall.

2.

Place the crown upon her head,

half in narrow strands,

a stone at her feet.

Gripped.  The real hand

called in his own blood.

He was mute and lame and free,

but the ghosts of the lash were on his back

or the crown upon his own head,

or the sun.

From The Irrational Element In Poetry

by Wallace Stevens in his Opus Posthumous

A day or two before Thanksgiving we had a light fall of snow in

Hartford.  It melted a little by day and then froze again at night,

forming a thin, bright crust over the grass.  At the same time, the moon

was almost full.  I awoke once several hours before daylight under my

window almost immediately.

From The Poetry Of Cats—Sam Carr, editor

A cat exists self-sufficiently and in its own right.  The cat resists (with

independence) sentimentally with anthropomorphism.

CHAPTERS

PART ONE: BROKEN SILENCES

1. That Genuine Hello          9                                                                                                                                                   

2. Silent Night: Midnight Maria          18       

3. My Girl Sunday          25

4. The Mysterious Ways Of Clocking It          37

PART TWO: THE EMPEROR AT THE BREAKFAST TABLE

5. Nothing Better Than A Pollyanna Wedding          41

6. Poinsettias In The Temple, The Blessing          44

7. Sing Me A Riddle: What A Jack-In-The-Box Is To A Cracker Jack          47

8. Snowball Jammin'          49

9. Rum Cake On My Mind          55

PART THREE: AN INDIAN IN PASTELS, ONE GOOD HONORABLE BOY

10. A Formula For A Sweeter Life          58

11. Frazier Park, Fencing          63

12. A Modern Day Juliet's Excuse          77

PART FOUR:  ANGEL MAN, HUMBLE MAN, EPILOGUE

13. Excellent Virtues, Inner Exit          85

14. Next Time I'll Find You Sleeping          101

15. Postcards From A Wigwam: MicMac Murmurs        104

16. The Famous We Love And Lose          109

PART ONE: BROKEN SILENCES

CHAPTER ONE

THAT GENUINE HELLO

With all this having been a recording of dreams, she smiled. Clearly, Leona noted that they had little rhyme or sense of things. It had been many years since she had come of age in the land of the cowhooves of poetry, far away from the noises of crowds and the drift of uncertain destiny for her. She might have been happy to say, if you were to ask her, that more than from vivid imaginative exaggeration, she sprung from out of a Renaissance painting looking most unique. Her smile remained fiery, genuine.

Do you know what is difficult about a dream? Why, the automatic writing, Leona San-Maria Matthews admitted.

I see that you have come to understand that.

Yes., said Leona to the Cartographer, You realize then that, I, need the freedom of running wild with them. When I'm controlling how to circumvent strangers who pass through the golden pastures of which I call precise silences, then can I feel better.

By day, sitting in an easy chair, fading through the melody of dreams, the embryo of a nightmare was the authentic obsession. There were better thoughts besides one better dream, so Leona threw up her hands in disguise of knowing how to pray in church on Sunday.

The day after church services went on, Leona San-Maria Matthews took stock of what prayers were said. This was in the October of 2021. It was morning. Not yet noon. Leona was clear about the vision of neighbors who had the courtesy to say hello and what it meant to a healthy yet slightly lonely artist who did not dare falter from her job of delighting people with paint and paper and canvas and who lingered on the reputation she might get from shameful experiences, although she was a pure woman. She, truly, wanted to apply herself. You might say she was like a finnicky cat. Dear, Gawd. If merlins existed, could they ever hurt her? They well might. She circumvented the meaningfulness of creative, happy loving. You might say she was certainly finicky and uncertain of praise.

Next week, she would see her doctor. She did not want to die. . . er, upset the Apple Cart. Contingent with clean spirits, she got into the bath and soaped herself up, dried, and wandered into her bedroom. She crept inside a passionate night of lime ice, a syzygy that created the moon with a howling of the wolf like a poet howling down a poem that caused her to lay there, deep into a black night, staring up at the ceiling above her thinking of the ice in her heart.

i am accused of zounds". here. The leaves are raked in and circle light and time. It becomes nauseous. What is it that i have said

or what did i do about that? When i wonder about who might lose the race of dreams of emperors and chariots, there is verite and lots of connections to