She was legs, hips, breasts, and bone. Same as a cow, worth less perhaps. Dredged up words from the dark well of your mouth, not ancient, just old. “Ace” a hiss, curled around the syllable. Careful, you are wearing history with no place here. Tonight’s Quadrille prompt from the bar is the word ‘Ace’. I did a bit of a google search and discovered that in the middle ages, the word ‘ace’ could be used to be ‘of no worth’ or ‘bad luck’.
Someone says panic attack, adrenaline spike, low, calm, and confident, laying a diagnosis out like a challenge, while I sit here, stumped, all root and no branch to climb up, to escape by, not a spike but a stake pinning me in this place.
Instead of speaking she breathes across the skin of her coffee. Whispers, the words unwanted to an empty chair across and closes her eyes, sips her drink, when nothing is said in return and blots a last goodbye on a napkin from the counter.
Good ideas never really come all at once. Your lightbulb moment is more like the switch on a kettle pinging to off when the water finally comes to a full boil. The stillness can be mistaken for suddenness, but clarity takes longer to steep.
The size six snake three trees over, slithered past here last Saturday. The iguana on fern saw her by the pool. Think’s she looks better in the water. Told the croc by willow he should swim on. Big boys like him stand no chance. This is what happens when poets start commenting on other poet’s work. You end up down the rabbit hole with snakes, iguanas and crocodiles. (It didn’t end well for the rabbit.) To check out the writer who provided the inspiration for this quadrille, and then joined me in the madness, hop over to Jane Dougherty Writes. There you can find more of her work like the poem below: Whip snake resplendent in green and black beading, striped vicious as a wasp, terrifying as braided headdress, twisted and entwined with feathers and human teeth, squirms and twitches and sloughs, aghast that this shrugged off apparel, skin of skins, must be how he looks.
Do chameleons ever forget how to change? Do they lose themselves in the backdrops. Forget skins on tree branches, upon broad, flat leaves? Where water pools in stills, catching light like a trap. Do they see themselves or just the skin they wear shifting. So I’ve just had a bit of surprise while scrolling through the wordpress reader! My poem ‘Until The Light Gets In‘ has been accepted and published on The Drabble. They did email me to let me know but I hadn’t check my email this afternoon and happened on my submission mostly by accident. I do believe the dVerse Poets Pub Quadrille night is the perfect way to celebrate.
They told me you were hard to puzzle out, a riddle wrapped in a conundrum. Like an onion, I would have to peel back the layers to find what you really were beneath. In reality, your smile was so open, I walked in uninvited.
I’ve kept all the pieces of you that I could find. Stored them safely, wrapped away in a box somewhere hidden and warm, until I can remember how the puzzle goes and slot you back into yourself, a little more fragile perhaps but whole again.
My mother taped mittens to my wrists, that made my hands sweat into wet worms without purchase. She told me that you were dangerous but by then I was older, knew how to sink my claws in, and to give in to the itch.
I could sleep here, belly warm against the stone arms splayed, wings, bent at the elbows, reaching perhaps to hold but for now still, warm, cheek pressed to rock sun baked, lazy, stubbornly forgotten long ago when this place was ice long from melting. Since there is no Quadrille night this Monday over at DVersePoets I thought I’d write one inspired by my recent trip to Snowdonia National Park. The views were utterly stunning and it really does feel like you’re escaping the modern world. A Quadrille is a poem written in exactly 44 words. The DVerse Poets Pub runs a fortnightly Quadrille prompt for those who fancy having a go in the company of some wonderful fellow blogger/poets.
