Poetry & Prose by Carol J Forrester
Their heads bob like drinking birds,
of course, of course, of course.
Necks pulled up from their collar bones.
I have never seen throats so open
as when your snout is at their jugular
the gleam on bright white teeth
masked by sheer magnetism.
Tonight’s quadrille prompt had me a little stumped to begin with. Then I started writing about iron filings, got stuck fifteen words in, and wrote this quadrille instead. I even got to bring out one of my own sketches to use for the feature image.
Did you hear me say ‘I love you’ last night?
when I left the kiss of it on your skin
and curled my hands into claws oh so tight
wondered who led who, into all this sin.
Wondered if sin was what we’re really in
then lost the edge of my thought on your lips
found it again in the dips of your hips,
tried to tell you, that you were everything
the only one I trust when this mask slips
a lover, a partner, my rock, my life spring.
Tonight’s form challenge is a Dizain. A ten line poem with ten syllables per line and a rhyme scheme that follows the pattern ababbccdcd.
Caught
I clung
inside you.
Pendent between
each aching inhale.
Cautious you might breath out
and send me spinning upwards.
A helicopter seed whirling
away as if I’d never been there,
the hollow I’d leave unnoticed by you.
These were never wing, they were always sails.
Filled up with questions I asked myself,
to keep my feet from touching down
on lands unfamiliar,
filled with strangers like me
always pulling at
something unseen,
pretending
they knew
love.
If you want to know more about this form of poetry then check out Colleen’s handy post on how to write an Etheree. I’ve not come across them before, though the form reminds me a little of Fibs which are great fun to write.
The two words for this week’s prompt were ‘Mystery’ and ‘Attraction’ so I went with ‘pulling’ and ‘questions’.
There’s a window open,
upstairs, perhaps, I think,
behind the door
you’re peering round.
Written For The December Form Challenge – Day One
An Xiasoshi
Lined up like tin soldiers, the railway houses don’t change much. Those narrow, red faces with wide eyes that keep watch on the crisscross of streets, their pockets of green tucked away with their tangles of washing-lines, and wooden sheds squeezed in between the weed clotted fences. It’s the sort of place where noise bounces down avenues and lands in a garden not its own. Music might be just as easily from a park you cannot see for grey roof tiles, as the radio downstairs. Wind carries laughter further than static.
The train line plays hide-and-seek between the buildings. Always behind the next fence, darting beneath your feet, slinking away between the mishmash of warehouses not yet reclaimed for renewal. In the same way your nervous systems fizzles beneath your skin, the tracks hum and rattle from corner to corner. In the thunder of carriages the words loose themselves. The statement, ‘I was here first, this is my town, I am the heart, the life giver, the cradle it crawled from to sprawl its way across green land and country lanes.’
Among the tattered edges of the outskirts, men in high viz score paint mark lines onto empty fields. New arteries already slicing the rural in half, prying it closer to the urban. Matchbox houses are packed beneath the topsoil, sprung, and loaded to bloom. Soon this will be another garrison of tin soldiers, with newer faces and prettier smiles.
Pigeons broke my fence,
with their fat, fast, crash landings.
Grown too quick to cope.
Today’s prompt was to write a haibun about the natural landscape of where you live. However, I live in a town that is gearing up for a new HS2 station in the not-to-far-off future so there isn’t much natural landscape left to talk about. Anyway, I hope you enjoy the Haibun. DVersePoets, you have trained me well for this particular prompt.
