Calm_writer , to random
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Good morning beauties, let's do an early

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egb , to poetry group
@egb@mstdn.party avatar

Today's NaPoWriMo poem - off prompt!

@poetry

The fear wraps around you like a childhood blanket the old night glaring at your blued body found you tucked inside the same apocrine fog you oozed as a child learning to love like another star collapsed black hole ripped open a two-tongued shadow fingers cocked when the monsters came shrieking static maybe all those ghosts were only knocking on doors they knew had never been locked to say hold fast kid don’t get swallowed by it
ALT
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    • egb , to poetry group
    @egb@mstdn.party avatar

    Today's NaPoWriMo prompt was to choose some language/ideas from the book "The Strangest Things in the World" and write about it.

    I was inspired by the section "mammal prototypes of the mermaid." 🧜‍♀️

    This is a bit of a longer one, but it really captured my imagination! https://elizabethburnam.com/2024/04/04/the-inventors-journal-several-early-prototypes-of-the-mermaid/

    @poetry

    The inventor’s journal: several failed prototypes of the mermaid 1. Our first try was truly grotesque. More anglerfish than angel, she thrashed like a storm when we tried to hold her, latched on with a venomous bite and would not let go. But we could see in her pearl-blue eyes that we were onto something: alight in the darkness, luminary of the questions man has yet to answer. 2. The second was a dud. Neither air nor water would please her. She gagged on both, drowning on the sand dunes and suffocating in the sea. Stubborn bitch, what do you want? We would've torn open the sky to tame her. But her voice was garbled, thunderous, and we couldn't learn her language in time to fix it. She did not survive long. 3. Promising—fit neatly in the bathtub, trembled under the hot rush of tap water, with gorgeous prismatic scales that glittered like a thousand stars. This one was insatiably cruel, though, called our best scientists swine and slashed at our throats when we got close enough to touch. We cut her open to figure out what went wrong, and her tiny heart glowed like a will-o-the-wisp. 4. Fish head, fish torso, with sturdy human legs to carry the wet half around. She spoke plain english but couldn't sing. Not sexy enough—there was no market for it. S. The siren-type of fantasy, human in all the right places with a voice like a cool ocean breeze. Her eyes rippled like the surface of a lake and we saw only what we wanted to see: beauty, power, immortality. ‘We called her Selene, our
    ALT
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    • egb , to poetry group
    @egb@mstdn.party avatar

    I went to a Magical Realism Poetry Workshop today and I learned the 3 core components of magical realism:

    1. the magic happens in the real world
    2. the magic isn’t questioned and doesn’t perplex the characters
    3. it’s often used as a critique of a societal issue

    Here’s the poem it inspired for me! Pretty proud of this one 🔮✨

    @poetry @poets @writing

    Thrift shopping The best thrift store in town is found through a revolving door at the base of a lilac tree. I went there today and bought a wicker basket that begs to be filled with rainwater and howls when it leaks. I spotted it on a shelf behind a bullet, a burning tower, and an unbraided money tree. My grandmother, the hummingbird, tapped twice on the storefront window and tossed a song through the glass that went like this: twinkle twinkle little light, I should've held you nice and tight, before you followed bramble dreams that tore you open at the seams. I pretended not to hear her. I took my time digging through rows of knick-knacks, an appellate court of subjective utility. Could I scrub the blood out of a used bandaid? Do I really need another forgone conclusion? Is $9.99 too steep a cost for a girl about my age twisted up in the vines of a velvet-leaf philodendron? I saw my own face in a broken mirror and wondered where it came from. Who gives the suicides a second love when they scrap their lives away? I think I could. I think I'd take them out for every summer storm and hold them while they howled.
    ALT
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    • drevrpg , to random
    @drevrpg@dice.camp avatar

    What little known or overlooked scifi would make great role playing material? This is a chance to promote your own books, but I expect an elevator speech. :p

    egb , to poetry group
    @egb@mstdn.party avatar

    I’ve been doing this self-portrait poetry series every January for the past few years.

    I think it’s a cool way to see how my life has changed but also how my writing has evolved.

    #1 was written in Vermont, #2 was written in New Mexico, and #3 was written in Washington.

    Finished this year’s portrait a day late but I think it still counts.

    @poetry

    Self-Portrait in Solitude, Late January #1 (2022) She collects words and rocks them in her arms like a mother would her baby: Sallow, nighthawk, and serendipity. She presses her cheek against the window. The sun beckons, the cloud of heat both soft and heavy at the same time. She wafts into her socks and snow boots, tying first the left, then the right laces. She reminds herself to keep her heart always open. Outside, she looks for omens like a half-moon in blue sky or robins weaving ribbons in a nest. She kicks blocks of ice down the sidewalk until they break into dust. She grins. She asks herself questions just to hear them echo in the cathedral of her mind: When you enter a poem, who speaks through the mouthpiece? How come squirrels wonder where and corvids wonder why? If Sunday were forever, what would stillness feel like?
    image/jpeg

    Self-Portrait in Solitude, Late January #2 (2023) The dirty work is done; she retreats to the peak called Watch Tower, cross-legged on the street facing the Cathedral. She listens for the downhill silence, an echo of upwind's childish joy: lodine, sun-daze, tumbleweed. She devours heat and sound like a starved animal, a flea gnawing on the hides of time. Her thumbs ache and she thinks, here, at last, a pain that belongs. A QR code unfurls into a webpage full of lies. She remembers how to make a home, how to keep a fire burning through the long dark eve. Love and fear braided like sage and carried beyond the mountain range, from this coast to that, where the sun sets just a little bit later. She watches who's here and she wonders who's been here, beneath the roses. The ghosts of America, the barely not-consumed. Three black cats, buying suits for a wedding. She curls up to protect her face, her stomach. An old man nearby says to his companion: "Well, now that we're having lunch, what do you think we'll do for dinner?" A prayer for the life she couldn't afford to spare. A prayer for her lover's wife. A prayer for the body under the bridge with the bullet through its head. 6-7-7-2. She squints. "It's only this far on a map, though —which direction? Wish I knew."
    ALT
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