#Iowa gothic

[degenderates]

Downey, IA.

#midwest gothic #american gothic #gothic americana #abandoned #iowa gothic #iowa #josiah's photos #midwest #mine

[daughterofcainnnn]

abandoned church in iowa

#photography #film #abandoned #iowa #rural #southern gothic

[crumb]

Storm Lake, Iowa (1973)

#midwest gothic #midwest #1970s #70s #winter #snow #iowa #vintage #retro #americana

[wormkats]

morning on the highway somewhere near the missouri/iowa/nebraska border

#nebraska #missouri #iowa #winter #rural midwest #midwest #rural gothic #mine #december

[twinsfawn]

FOREST CITY, IA — 7/21/18

#iowa #suburbia #midwest gothic #photography #homes #summer #nostalgia #sunlight #trees

[kylejasonblack]

#american gothic #Iowa #highway 30 Iowa #palisades park Iowa

[abandonedhousesofruralamerica]

#abandoned #abandoned farmhouse #abandoned for years #abandonedhousesofruralamerica #midwest #minnesota #photography #aesthetic #weird core #weirdcore #vintage #60s #50s #creepy #north dakota #vintage cars #iowa #oddcore #odd core #farm #rural #midwest gothic #rural gothic #photographers on tumblr

[blairdwe]

#dark paintings #dark surreal art #dreamscape #landscape painting #oilpainting #dark art #dark painting #oil on canvas #oil painting #iowa #art #gothic

[highways-are-liminal-spaces]

Dark clouds over Iowa and Nebraska

Taken April 2022

#nebraska #iowa #great plains gothic #smoke #thunderstorms #abandoned buildings #farms #my photos #my places #thv

[ominouspositivity-or-else]

midwestern gothic

It's snowing again. It snowed yesterday. It snowed the day before. It's supposed to snow tomorrow. The weather man's hair is gray. He says that it has always been February. You must have counted the days wrong. Your calendar says it's June.

The basement of the Catholic church has a Stephen King book on the lending shelf. It's a beaten up copy, and some old church lady has gone through and blacked out parts in thick sharpie. There are pages with only one word visible. The pages are yellow. The name in the cover is accompanied with a funeral card. "Rest in peace" it reads. You do not think that someone who took Stephen King's most offensive scenes to the grave with her will be able to rest peacefully.

The basement of the Lutheran church smells like coffee. "It smells like coffee," your uncle says, "Church basement coffee." "I know," you say, because you're in the church basement. "It smells like death." He smiles at you, and raises his styrofoam cup towards you. The coffee smells stronger on his breath.

Jerry's is never open past ten on the weekends. One time, driving past at midnight on Saturday, the windows were full of light. There were no cars in the parking lot. You are struck with the memory of all the taxidermied animals on the walls.

"That's how we made it in the great depression," you say, when your friend asks why you made such a brown looking food. "We're not in the great depression now," they answer, as though they can't see the eyes of your dead great grandmother in the window, looking at you with a friendly and menacing look, "Why do you make it like that?"

The sun is hot. The sun is burning. Your skin is cooking, your flesh is sizzling. You were not made for these temperatures. The world took too long in training you to survive the cold. It never taught you how to brave the heat. You set foot on the sand. You feel your skin begin to melt. You run.

The last berry is sitting in the bowl. No one will touch it. No one will look at it. It is invisible to every eye. Your littlest sister reaches for it. You slap her hand like she's reaching for a hot coal. That berry does not exist. No one will touch it. No one will look at it. It is invisible.

You're sitting on the boat in the sunshine. The water laps lazily against the side. You look down into the water, and you see a shark. You pull back, staring up at the clear blue sky. You look down towards the water again. There are no teeth. The shark is gone. It's a freshwater lake.

There are twinkies in the glove box of your car. There is a shovel in the trunk. There is an ice scraper in the pocket of the door. There is a pair of thick, warm mittens in your bag. They have been there since winter. It's October.

Your grandfather is telling you about the fish he caught in his ice house. No one was around to see it, and he threw it back. It sounds like the shark you saw last summer. Everyone laughs. You do too.

You go out to visit the ice house. The sun is starting to set. You'll have to drive back in your grandfather's truck. It's been on the ice all day. You open the door, and the black and white fish-camera screen shows you the relics of frozen plants, and a northern swims right by the camera. It's tail swooshes. It has an almost human look in its eye. You think it knows who you are. It probably wants to eat you.

Hockey is on in the background. Your grandmother is drinking a beer. She's talking about her parents. They have been dead for 20 years. She's cursing about them. She shouldn't speak ill of the dead. No one tells her to stop. You don't want to listen. You sit there. The only alternative is to watch the hockey game.

There are forty-five dear in your front yard. They see you. Their glowing eyes blink in the darkness. They stare. You shake your fist at them through the glass of your window. Their eyes glow red. Something horrifying lives within them. You don't want to know what it is. There are forty five deer. They continue to eat your flower garden.

You do not smile for three days. You make seven people cry uncontrollably in front of you. The other three you interact with call you names behind your back. Your parents give you a talking to about your attitude. The lady at church tells you, "Some of us have been thinking about how we need to maintain a really welcoming and upbeat attitude for newcomers to our parish! Being rude and impolite really won't attract anyone to our parish, and I have seen some people just be generally downhearted when they come to church. It's an issue. I think I'll go bring it up with the pastor. He'll get it out to everyone." You plaster a smile on your face. No one says anything. You're supposed to be polite.

It takes you seven hours to get to your grandma's house. There are no hills for the entire drive. In the winter, the stretch of highway is the only thing that keeps you sane. People went mad on prairies like this, your mom says, to a car full of quiet people. Nothing but the sky and the grass and the wind and their one-room houses. You believe her. You can see the images of buildings on the horizon, always the same distance away.

There is a cemetery in the center of a farmer's field. A church used to be there, someone once said to you. They tore it down, but kept the cemetery. You wonder why they have respect for creation but not the creator. You wonder what made them tear the church down. You wonder if anyone visits. You drive past that lonely cemetery at night. You think you see someone staring at you from behind the chicken-wire fence. You look away.

There is a sign on the side of the highway, written in ominous letters. It comes into focus as you drive by. Best place to buy knitting supplies in the whole state! You don't believe them. You see the sign five more times. Then they get worse. Come to our store. We need you at our store. We know who you are. We have yarn for you. We know where you live. Each one gets more threatening. Stop at our store. The last one reads, and so you pull over at the correct intersection. You buy five bags of yarn. The lady behind the desk is smiling. You smile back. You cannot feel your lips.

All the kids at school hate you. You'll never tell them. They cannot know.

The Kwik Trip has a nasty bathroom. Theirs are usually so clean. You feel sick. You walk out and tell your mom you need to go to the identical gas station across the street. Her eyes flash. She buys her soda, and you drive across the road. The gas station is identical in every way. The displays are the same. The candy is in the exact same spots. They have the same magazines. The man working at the desk is the exact same one. This bathroom is clean, though. You buy another soda and leave. The bell rings to announce your departure.

The city is different now. The lights are too bright. The smell hangs low. The crime is higher. You don't feel safe walking outside at night. You think about the wolves that used to live here. You hope they haunt the streets. They deserve to.

Someone shot up the big city Walmart yesterday. They're closing down. You hear a disappointed church lady tell her friend that she doesn't know where to get her radium, anymore. All the good places are going out of business. "It's those stupid kids," she says, "And all the theft. I wish I lived in Kewaunee." You are too caught up on the "radium" thing to question the name of that town.

Your boss is angry. You can feel it in the air. It vibrates around you like a jelly, stifling and crushing you, pushing your lungs into your chest. She smiles at you as you clock out. "You're fired" she says, her eyes trying to commit a crime. Her lips do not move as she speaks. They are frozen in her "customer service" smile.

You dump things into a pot. You do not read the labels. Everything sounds the same. Everything tastes the same. You have not touched your spice rack in three years. You have not ever smelled cardamom in your life. You do not know what chili is supposed to taste like. It's all the same. Everything is the same. It all tastes like hotdish. You eat it like it's the last food on earth and you're starving.

#midwestern gothic #my writing #horrors within my comprehension #quite literally #i wrote it #midwestern #minnesota #wisconsin #north dakota #south dakota #iowa #united states #gothic #gothic aesthetic #goth aesthetic #midwesterners #for bethany

[midwestgothicisbestgothic]

“To think of the Midwest as a whole as anything other than beautiful is to ignore the extraordinary power of the land. The lushness of the grass and trees in August, the roll of the hills (far less of the Midwest is flat than outsiders seem to imagine), the rich smell of soil, the evening sunlight over a field of wheat, or the crickets chirping at dusk on a residential street: All of it, it has always made me feel at peace. There is room to breathe, there is a realness of place. The seasons are extreme, but they pass and return, pass and return, and the world seems far steadier than it does from the vantage point of a coastal city. Certainly picturesque towns can be found in New England or California or the Pacific Northwest, but I can't shake the sense that they're too picturesque. On the East Coast, especially, these places seem to me aggressively quaint, unbecomingly smug, and even xenophobic, downright paranoid in their wariness of those who might somehow infringe upon the local charm. I suspect this wariness is tied to the high cost of real estate, the fear that there might not be enough space or money and what there is of both must be clung to and defended. The West Coast, I think, has a similar self-regard...and a beauty that I can't help seeing as show-offy. But the Midwest: It is quietly lovely, not preening with the need to have its attributes remarked on. It is the place I am calmest and most myself.”

Curtis Sittenfeld, American Wife

***

Finally, someone gets it.

#quotes #midwest #curtis sittenfeld #american wife #books #words #prose #aesthetic #midwestern things #midwest gothic #midwestern values #midwest culture #wisconsin #iowa #illinois #minnesota #ohio #indiana #michigan #missouri #south dakota #north dakota #kansas #beauty #west coast #east coast #new england #pacific northwest

[degenderates]

Downey, IA.

#midwest gothic #midwest #american gothic #gothic americana #americana #iowa gothic #iowa #josiah's photos #mine

[env0writes]

Umber Embers Vol.2, 9.12.23 “Should Have Thought Ahead"

Sanguine silky smooth wine Weathered whining Finger wrapped wedding-band twine’ng Poor man’s promise Time slows Friends go Keep moving on Can’t ever be wrong Hazy clouds overhead Floating on by –thoughts Sensation to the fingertips like lead Inside is full of wants Float down the river Bottles and bothered to say I love you Riverbed pressed, mud, love deliver I’ve no need for thoughts with feelings true

@env0writes C.Buck Ko-Fi & Venmo: @Zenv0 Support Your Local Artist! Photo by @env0

#writeblrcafe #poeticstories #poetryportal #twc #spilled ink #wutispotlight #writtenconsiderations #poetselixir #Umber Embers Vol.2 #env0 writes #september #love poem #love quotes #thinking about floating down that river in iowa getting drunk #creative writing #alt lit #poetswhisper #midwest gothic #suburban gothic #rhyming poem #twcpoetry #writerscreed #abstractcommunity #savage words #smittenbypoetry #poetscreed

[crumb]

Lansing, Iowa (1974)

#1970s #70s #midwest gothic #american gothic #rural america #rural gothic #midwest #iowa #small town gothic #small town

[audreyslists]

Grant Wood

(b. 1891, d. 1942), focused his art in regionalism, modern art, and social realism.

opinion: love his art, especially American Gothic, but social realism and regionalism doesn't "speak" to me.

American Gothic (1930)

Spring in Town (1941)

The Midnight Ride of Paul Revere (1931)

Stone City, Iowa (1930)

Sultry Night (1939)

Young Corn (1931)

#grant wood #regionalism #american gothic #modern art #male model #american painter #art #artwork #america #iowa #american art #painting #american #realism #social realism

[hazelmead]

150523

#american gothic #midwestern gothic #iowa #aesthetic #nostalgiacore #liminal spaces #liminal #dreamcore #emptycore #weirdcore #cryptidcore #digital photography #made with kodak #kodak easyshare #dark coquette #prairiecore #dark prairiecore #hazelmead #americana