All posts tagged: writing

The Walls Whistle – Flash Fiction #DVersePoets

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They bought the house new, especially to avoid these sorts of things.There is nothing behind the wall, except a space where the wind whistles, and it always whistles. Even on still days, when the plastic windmills in the neighbour’s garden don’t clatter, and Gregory Mutt’s union jack is slummed around its flagpole, the wind whistles!‘I don’t quite understand what you want?’ the contractor explained. ‘There’s nothing to explain where a draught would be getting in, and we’ve checked all your external walls.’‘Listen though!’ Jenny hauled him through the kitchen by the front of his shirt, pressed her face to the lilac paint. ‘It’s whistling now!’The contractor stared at her, wide eyed, and a little sweaty.‘Aye,’ he croaked, ‘I hear it.’She yanked him closer.‘You will,’ she said, quiet now. ‘You will be the one to make it stop.’ It’s the end of a long day and I still have words to write for NaNoWriMo, but I’m taking a little break to pop over to the dVersePub and see what delights they have in store for tonight’s …

Watcher Under The Table – A Poem By Carol J Forrester

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Exhausted, your prostate yourself,legs aloft and crooked,chin tilted towards some ceiling corneras if to suggest you were focusedon anything but us.Still,you follow footsteps with a beady eye,wriggle your spine against tile,happiness thumping in rapid, swishing beats. As Lillian shared a lovely doggy snap with us tonight, I thought I’d include a sketch I did last month. I’m currently 9,000 words deep in NaNoWriMo, but when I’m not writing I have a go at improving my drawing skills, which mainly involves many hours of looking, sketching, going ‘well that’s shit”, erasing and trying again.

Ten Years Of Blogging And Have I Learnt Anything From It

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Today is the ten year anniversary of Writing and Works. That’s right, I’ve been mad enough to continue blogging for ten years. I started this site so that I would have somewhere to share my writing, and hopefully reach people who would want to read it. Since then, the site has changed and morphed slightly. During my first year blogging, I didn’t post any poems, but now poetry is the biggest feature of this site. I rarely write ‘my life’ posts these days, and most my fiction gets tucked away or submitted elsewhere. However, I went back to that very first post this morning, and though my style has evolved over the years, the core of what I was saying still resonates with me. So as I sit with pen in hand I see almost everything. It’s not the world I visit though, the one supposedly occupied by you and I, but the great expanses of kingdoms and domains that unfurl within imagination. My home is wandering among ideas and capturing in words what I …

Age Old Tradition – A Poem By Carol J Forrester #DVersePoets

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I should have taken that course,the one with the guywho builds drystone walls up northfor the farmers who have to maintainthings the way they’ve always been.A bit like how I’m still tryingto keep this how it waswhen you laid each slab in placeone, against the other,so clever with your fingers,finding the flattest stones,the edges most like jigsaw pieces,and stacking the piletill it looked like a skyscrapereven if it always was only a folly. I’ve just taken part in Caroline Bird’s Brave Writing poetry workshop, so I was a little worried I’d be all poet’d out by the time I got round to the DVerse prompt for this evening. It was an amazing workshop and I feel like a got so much out of it, much as I did with the workshop I did last year run by Mark Pajak. Workshops are a great way to improve your poems and your craft. Also, my poem When Medusa Goes Shopping went live on The Daily Drunk today! I think this is the first poem I’ve had published …

The Year After Last – A Poem By Carol J Forrester #DVersePoets

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Squirming at the pumpkin guts, your hands scooped into ladles, spooning palmfuls of seed and sludge. We took desert spoons to the wisp remains. Raked the slick walls smooth. Marked out the features with sharpies, a wide outline mouth, hollow eyes, skeleton nose. Sawed kitchen knives through thick sick, fingers squeaking tight on the handles. This year, that kitchen is someone else’s, and the plants have not spat out anything other than flowers, their yellow blooms autumn mulched into the borders. There is no spilling through the doorway, hat and coats rain kissed into my open arms. No mud footprints on the tiles. Only seeds, sat on the shelf, kept dark and safe, for more hospitable times. My own roots deepening, on the promises pushed away till Spring. Evening has a weight,a sense of things settling down,comfort in closing.

Plan Gone To Ancient Crete #FlashFiction #WritingPrompt

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Grinning, the newsreader finished his story and muttered something half-funny to the reporter next to him. Edmund muted the sound and redialled Atlas, flicking crumbs off his armchair as the phone rang.‘Heyyyyyy mateyyy…’ Atlas’ voice trailed off.‘Problems with your connection?’ Edmund asked. The newsreader handed over to the hot weather guy, Edmund tried to remember his name, but he couldn’t put his finger on it. Something like Phil, or maybe Mark.‘Yeah, the line’s bad and I-’ Atlas broke off. ‘Look mate, I’m sorry I hung up on you, I didn’t mean to answer the call, I was dealing with a bank robbery and I forgot my phone was in the suit.’‘Bet everyone still came out alive though.’There was a pause. Edmund tracked the weatherman as he indicated high pressure coming in from the west.‘You ran headfirst into a train Ed. What did you think was going to happen? The way Tulis tells it, you damn near split your skull like an egg.’‘Bruised noggin’, nothing more. Stopped the train.’‘And killed every, single passenger on board.’‘Most were …

Bubble-Wrap Knuckles – A Poem By Carol J Forrester #DVersePoets

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Fireworks popping off underneath skin,an explosions against the brickwork.Blood so bright it burns my retinasand when I dreamed I can see it,the splash, the sizzle of colour.My own fists tight as un-popped corks deep in my dressing gown pockets,buried under lint and hidden things,like the sound of bone crackon plasterboard,always plasterboard,this fuse pulled taught between my shouldersunlitand your face so dark with thunderthe crash of it in a plate on the kitchen floor,slowly starts to clear. I feel like I need to preface this poem with the fact that it is not a description of a real event, or specifically based on one real individual. We’ve had sporadic fireworks for the last couple of weeks, so if anything, those are the main source of inspiration. Right with that out of the way, here’s an audio recording of the poem, and a note to say go and check out the rest of the poems written for tonight’s DVersePoets sound prompt.

A Clever And Cruel Man – A Poem By Carol J Forrester #DVersePoets

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You and your dim accuracy,head lolled loose eyes whitened and widenedtill the pupils blink out.Words come clipped,ransomed love lettersread like shopping lists,or obituaries. Call this a grey life,the air sucked clear your mouth a pursed funnel,but I am the culprit. Found the bruises of your hands,like marble sponge,cold as stonethe heat slipping over youwithout warming. In the well shade you sitwhile I sink deeper, darkerfor the waterline.Come up spitting dustand excuses.Shoulder a shallow cloakof indifference,already the hem unpickedby those grasping handsalways tappingrappingat the weakest point. Feel them at my templestonight, tomorrow, today,at the weakest pointalways tapping away. Ah, I’m really hoping I got this right. The five Samuel Greenberg charms that I used for my response are as follows: dim accuracy / grey life / marble sponge / the well shade / shallow cloak. I tried to emulate Greenberg’s abstract style (though not quite as drastically as he employs the abstract).

Fox In The Hen House – A Poem By Carol J Forrester #DVersePoets

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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 openas when your snout is at their jugularthe gleam on bright white teethmasked 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.