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.
Carol J Forrester 
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