Poetry & Prose by Carol J Forrester
She has the same look about her,
or so it seems
when she tilts her cheek just so
and the tides shift,
shrink in on themselves
so ashamed by her disappointment.
Uncanny, how similar she seems
reflected beside me.
He’d be gone before the rubble settled.
Leave a town burning in his wake,
crushed stone slithering through cracks
like sand in a broken hourglass,
pooling empty hours into empty streets.
This seafarer, spacefarer, carving out
his stamp on a place
so he might be able to see it from above
when he glanced down
at the ruins he’d built.
He must have seen a beauty in destruction
or why would he have sought out more?
This prompt challenges you to write a poem using at least one word/concept/idea from each of two specialty dictionaries: Lempriere’s Classical Dictionary and the Historical Dictionary of Science Fiction.
NaPoWriMo 2021 Prompt – Day Twelve
There was a sign propped up against the empty doorframe which read “If you are a dreamer, come in” except the paint had chipped, and instead of dreamer it read dream.
‘So?’ asked his wife. ‘Are you going in or not?’
She stood on tiptoes and tried to peer through one of the windows. Graham thought he saw her shiver, and for a moment started to shrug the jacket from his shoulders.
‘It looks abandoned.’ She stepped away and scowled. ‘You copied out the right address, didn’t you?’
Graham nodded, then felt his heart sink. An old lady stepped into the hall, the edges of her body blurring against the peeling wallpaper.
‘Oh,’ said his wife, now stood behind him. ‘She’s like me!’
She grinned and poked him in the ribs.
‘Poor Graham, can’t even find a living physic to help with your ghosts.’
If you are a dreamer, come in.
Shel Silverstein’s poem, Invitation, Where The Sidewalk Ends
For someone who doesn’t read a lot of horror/ghost stories, and can’t really watch the genre either, I seem to write a fair bit of it. I find I really adore these monthly Prosery prompts as there a great way to stretch the creative writing muscles when my focus has drifted away from flash fiction. It helps that Lillian picked a cracking line of poetry for tonight’s prompt as well.
In some exciting poetry news however, this week I’ve got two poems coming out, in two seperate magazines. The first was published on Sunday in the second issue of The Riverbed Review which is available to read for free on their site. The second is my poem ‘Overgrowth’, which I originally wrote for a Dverse prompt and is being published Wednesday, (with a couple of edits) in the first issue of Hencroft. A lot of journals and magazines do not accept poems that have appeared on blogs or social media previously, so I’m ecstatic to have the chance to publish with a magazine that didn’t mind.
After the heat passed out of our veins
and cold sucked all energy
right through the soles of our feet
to the same place shadows reached to.
When your voice seemed to linger,
half calling,
your smile flickering in my periphery.
That was when I turned my head,
slow and deliberate,
lips caught around words
I’d wished I’d said to you.
