Salt stiffened, her wings don’t liftexcept pinwheeling featherscaught helter-skelter by sea breeze,sun bleached and lichen lined.Watches for the hands rising,faces breaking among shallows,hope and desperation.She sings for them.Caged in her cove, she sings.
Why do that to yourself? Play around with perfection, even if it was only skin deep, and the smoothness of these curves turned your stomach at night, when dusk settles its hands either side of your hips, presses into the grooves where his tools worked you into beauty. Mounted you his sculpture for all men to see. Do you not appreciate how his love made you into a woman worth seeing?
How even when we whispered it there was someone shushing our small mouths with calloused fingers. Pressing the words back inside as if they were Ouranos horror struck but what we birthed in those terrible, unspeakable words. Filling our bellies with ideas we were not allowed to give life to. Until we burst from the ineffable and held it screaming before their faces. Made them look at what we’d made.
I followed your path, at a distance. You like the sun, or any volatile star burning a streak towards the horizon. A scorching vision to those of us watching, waiting. Aware that you would set before us. Terrified of dusk. Sensing its arrival anyway.
They name me jealous one. Plait snake through my hair, till it rises about my shoulders a mane of venom. Perhaps this is true enough. They say I crush men, the ones who come to me through their own will and actions. Lay the cruelty of betrayal at my feet. I am not my sisters, blood avenger, unceasing in pursuit. I am an emotion painted upon every action I set forth. I am furious and bright, burning beyond recognition till they shield their eyes and call me ugly. I am a woman of power. I’m so excited that it’s NaPoWriMo again and I get to drive in with the Early Bird Prompt. For anyone who doesn’t know what NaPoWriMo is, it’s an annual poetry challenge that takes place over April. The idea is to write a poem a day for all of April, resulting in 30 poems in total. (31 if you include the Early Bird Prompt). The NaPoWriMo site provides prompts if you want to use them but …
Love is a dangerous serpent, if you learn how to knot it how to twist it back on itself until it resembles nothing of love at all, then you can weave a noose from the stands cut from your own heart and choke the life out of those who refused to take it when love was first offered. And now for our (optional) prompt. In her interview, Brim provides us with several suggestions for generative writing exercises, and we’d like to challenge to today to tackle her third one, which is based in the myth of Narcissus. After reading the myth, try writing a poem that plays with the myth in some way. There is something in this myth that has rubbed me the wrong way today. I think it’s the parallel between Narcissus being cursed for not returning another’s love, and the current climate where women are sometimes thrown into toxic situations where rejecting an advance is seen as an insult that should be punished.
Sunrise was not for another hour but already the sky had taken on the grey haze that suggested morning was just around the corner. Elaine let her rucksack slip from her shoulder and hang in the crook of her arm while she fumbled with the knackered zip. The bottle inside was almost half empty, not enough to see her back down the mountain, but enough to see her to the top. She wrestled it free and used her teeth to pry to cap open. ‘Are you coming?’ Damien watched from where he’d stopped further up on the steps, bare legs and arms, tanned and muscled. He was younger, fitter as well but that had little to do with age, at least that was what Elaine told herself. ‘Just give me a minute,’ she called. The water was lukewarm and sour on her tongue but she swallowed it and snapped the cap shut. Her sweat had her clothes sticking, every crease and fold in the fabric welding itself to her limbs. She could swear the last time she’d …
It has been an eon or two since Pythia gases my Priestess, my Oracle, my Sacrifice. Time is a slippery creature and I’ve let it drain like sand through fingertips mostly not my own. My name took life for itself Frankenstein became his monster and I am still the hidden God somewhere in the realms where mortals should fear their tread. Is it any wonder that I kept you here carved out from the purple mists as something not quite yourself? It has been an eon or two since Pythia gases and I am still dreaming of you my first queen of nothingness of fantasy and illusion of all that is not quite real. You are the closest I will come to waking up. If you have an constructive criticism please, please take the time to leave it in the comments below. This poem took me four or five false starts before it started going somewhere so I could really do with hearing what people think. I knew what I wanted to write about but actually …
Woo! Today I struck 15,000 hits on Writing and Works! It seems that the stats keep going up and up lately and it makes me so happy to see people reading and enjoying my work. So here is a blast from the past, posted when I only had fifty followers and was just starting to get to grips with WordPress in April 2012. Artwork by the wonderful DeviantArt artist The Forsaken Sailor Siren’s Song James McCormic wouldn’t realise it until it was too late, but he never stood a chance when it came to the beautiful girl sitting in the window of the coffee shop on St George’s Street. He had to walk past the shop most mornings, his eyes flickering towards the flawless glass each time, just to check if she was there. Always waiting with her coffee cup in one hand and a blank covered book perched carefully upon her knee. She never saw him. At least James knew that she had never looked at him. Her gaze would remain downcast and he …
(Copyright for picture: Douglas M. Macllroy) The Right Height? “How high?” he asked. “High enough.” she replied dropping the rucksack to the ground. “High enough for us. For this.” “You think so?” He shuffled forward, sending pebbles skittering towards edge. “Don’t.” she said. “You’ll spoil the surface. We want this to be perfect.” “Perfect.” he repeated, holding fast where he was. “You want this to be perfect.” “We want this.” she insisted. “We’re doing this for us. Not me.” “For us.” he nodded. “Have you got the camera?” She muttered something and dived into the rucksack, rummaging around until she pulled free the Victorian style camera. “Ready?” he asked. In Love We Are Immortal “Aphrodite.” he called, hands loose at his sides as he saw her standing near the edge once again. You could not see the mortal world from here, but she could pretend that they felt her watching. “The others are waiting.” he told her. “Artemis and Apollo are already at each other’s throats; we need you to keep the places from going …
