A Weed on The Curb

  Sharing with The Sunday Muse #240 , poetry in the midwinter pause. Art by Michael Whelan Still angry at the bauble, the key to the vanished door Kept on a shelf as an inert memory, as dust-flavored time No one said we kept possibility just out of reach At least of the less-brave children, who never walked a shelf Or touched a bone or glass or a universe key But still, somehow, were wiser for their walk on this shore Than I have been making this discovery There is a not-insignificant part of me that would love to take this and make of it a novel in between the holidays, to create something out of that gorgeous painting. However, that may just be a brain freeze from standing in my stocking feet on the driveway while James strung Christmas lights over the front bed he'd just massacred and was feeling slightly guilty about. Sorry about the salvia. Have some Christmas lights. :)  front bed In my head, the reindeer is about to eat his way through the candy cane lights. Hope

  Sharing with The Sunday Muse #239 , a weekly poetry & flash site. Come share! The doves and mockingbirds knit the fog into socks and coats for those who walk the bridge over the ocean the land remembers glittering in rainbows, refractions; light bends infinity into all her bridges under which we pass. Welcome to second (third?) summer, much like the multiple meals of a wealthy hobbit, in which we have exceeded the pleasant sufficiency of warm weather and are filling in all the chilly corners. Is it time to convert all Christmas decorations to holiday at the beach? Sandmen and pelicans? Did I pick the wrong picture for this week's Muse? :) Hoping you're having a good week! -- Chrissa

  Sharing with The Sunday Muse #238 . Being put to the question and will you read What poem comes from the hand? Winter is spring, grey-white and yellow Circulation is down to the band. An industrial room with Mary on canvas A murmur, a dog, and this stand. Will you read the room, the day, the hour Will these seasons ever land? Let's start with lunch: it was a handful of peanut butter M&Ms because breakfast was late because yesterday's tired hasn't yet washed out of my head  and  I'm still considering what it means to have dreamt that the secret to success was engraved on a clear plastic knife and handed to me just before I woke up. I'm pretty sure it was a good secret, really motivating and clarifying and totally impressive for having been scratched onto a picnic knife; a creative and useful tool that totally wouldn't accidentally get thrown out with the casual thoughtlessness of waking up. It's going to haunt me all day.  -- Chrissa 

  Greetings and salutations! This is a piece for The Sunday Muse #237 . Come and wander down this week's paths! The path was just the remains of houses, Barns, sheds: if you want to find the ghosts You have to walk the their homes' bodies:  Think balanced thoughts in the evening, Listen for the coyote and deer running, Watch for snakes on the cooling boards,  And tell yourself the shadow is a house.  *deep breath* Yesterday was a lesson in listening to your gut. Today I'm trying to remain awake despite the rain (and the warm, fluffy dogs) and my brain essentially saying "sleeep....sleeeeeep....sleeeep." We were in a minor fender-bender yesterday and it aggravated an old injury (it's much better today) and I don't think my body or brain has caught up with the fact that EVERYTHING IS FINE. And I have a wordcount to hit. (....sleeeep.....sleeeeep....sleeep) Today's poem is therefore short, my draft currently consists of lots of deleted sentences, and...zz

  Sharing with The Sunday Muse #236 .  On the day when the day didn’t come The house hared off after the latest suburban renewal A goddess came riding; no longer did a fence Prevent the forest or its spirits from knocking Do you answer in shorts? You don’t. You dress for the nothing in the silk Trailing mulberry forests in the dancing breeze Take yourself to meet the sullen creek Who never wanted neighbors like you And it is thirsty for the waters already bottled On the shelves were the goddesses shop They throw the plastic behind them Perhaps believing they worship the roadways According to the creek, who, it turns out, Toadless and thin, is relieved to talk to anyone On the day when the day didn’t come. -- Chrissa

  Sharing with The Sunday Muse #235 . Poetry is the usual rule of the venue, but the community is generous and welcoming. Come share! They had voted against keeping chickens in these suburban yards during the last election, but Vita could hear neighbor’s birds, restless and outspoken as the neighbors. She could also hear the tiny chick that someone had left just under the hand of the statue in her garden, trying to inform it’s family of its location. It had been sitting quietly until it noticed Vita.  Those kids probably assumed it was St. Francis rather than the Rambler when they snuck it into her backyard. Everyone assumes the pomegranates are apples and my yard a metaphor for Eden.  She leaned against old fence section she’d converted into a plant stand and stared at the bird, who stared back at her.  That one knows who’s protecting her.  Vita wasn’t sure whether she or her garden could claim any protection from the saints of Green House. Fae saints weren’t into that. This week'

  Sharing with The Sunday Muse #234 .    Tracie knows the attic holds the mirror Crow feathers, cobwebs, and space Aunt's last legacy, scratched, obscure Crow feathers, cobwebs, and space Beyond silver glass, in the dark cracks Crow feathers, cobwebs, and space Flaneurs dance on the wires, men move Crow feathers, cobwebs, and space What haunts the city, taunts the town Crow feathers, cobwebs, and space Its joys and labor, shadows continue Crow feathers, cobwebs, and space Not sure if this counts as a ghost story, but the first image recalls Nancy Drew covers and the second chimes with the book of ghost stories currently lurking by the couch. I'm about a third of the way through one of the drafts I'd hoped to finish in October and the month seems have vanished. OoooooOoooooo. :)  Happy Halloween! -- Chrissa

Inspired by WordCrafters' eerie wordlist, Halloween Vibes.    Hallowed Vibes Maeve hunts the hills where satellites bloom She dreams of the Grand Ball, the universe outflung, While gathering a handful of glowing moons. She blows them as wishes to the space-spun illusion: Everything above her an infinite fall, unspooled. Hallowed Vibes, The Return Break the clay feet from the sorceress crow Bones fell yesterday on the plaster mold The dead insist you buy them home. Rise of the Vibe, Hallowed Vibes III Drink the potion chilling in the chest We're haunting the lot, horror promised Sheet hung like a ghost new-skinned As the zombie scrawl gleams, begins Decades gone but groaning afresh, Our skulls' precinct pricked with unrest. 

  Sharing with The Sunday Muse #233 , surreal and real poetry. Clouds echo the fountain, spray and surround One goose floats swan-ward between the skies Along the empty alley, reflective, upside down. -- Chrissa

 Sharing with The Sunday Muse #231 .  I’m waiting on her here,  just leaning between shade, sun, and car door. Gotta pickup here, back entrance.  You’d never know that the sound Washing against the city  isn’t the ocean but a crowd.  She’ll be here. Just a few minutes more.  We’re going to emptiness, some restaurant Used to drive by, smell pepperoni and family, smell America. Used to be.  Dust and sunlight and old brick— now serving a new album. Do they have those anymore?  Wax and silver? Great black speakers? Roll over you  like that crowd floods and puddles in the traffic noise. She knows I’m waiting.  Waiting for her. Waiting for yesterday. She’s got a song about old starlight and I can feel it here Sticking to the hot asphalt,  fused in the shadows,  staining windowsills. Gotta wait.  New starlight on the back of my shoulders, drowned in sound. Finally seeing a little bit of fall weather and I've moved out on the patio to annoy the birds and pretend I'

 Sharing with T he Sunday Muse, #230 . I wanted to hold the city's hand.  Reaching out the car window at a stoplight, shaking the hands of whoever could reach me, stretching from the passenger window. I wanted to live in the concrete. There were days when I trusted bricks, when I slid across the vinyl seats and believed the rain allowed  a faster arrival in their Buick. I wanted a compatible reality In the phantom limb of the ocean,  grasping the arms of dolphin and men-o-war as we skipped down the sidewalks and sang through rain filtering the light green. We would find an eternal city If only we could drown in it.

 Sharing this weekend with The Sunday Muse, #229 .  Why do you think the chapel is empty? All the deer passed through and pulled the leaves from the windows, glass and gold and leading.  Follow them if you want shade Stay if you want to cleanse the self in this light, a remaining fall of dust and sun and sulfur. Remain in this cell of honey and umber. c. sandlin, 2022

 Sharing with The Sunday Muse #228 , The Fashionable Twenties.  A sycamore fairy sits crosslegged in the road Dragons swim toward smooth hills above the storms Vines embrace the telephone poles  Someone washed the blue skies and she knows  It's time to dare the salty foam It's time to wade through the eternal fields' folds And gather golden apples for home.  Hoping this finds you with space to daydream and a good book in which to wander. Working on turning last week's prompt into a longer piece, as I found myself intrigued by the idea of tea in the garden as combat. Social situations are not my forte. As it's still Spider September, there will be a chihuahua-sized jumping spider that is none too happy about anything but hunting squirrels (that's for you, Mom).  -- Chrissa

 Sharing with The Sunday Muse #227 .  I was sick that week,  muffled and sore-throated. We tore those pages  out of Mom's British magazines  in a frenzy of making up  a game of fairy chess: tile floors full of supermodels, expensive dogs, perfume bottles, gardens, and real royalty. No jumping, no war.  Just tense tea times, lost gardens and wise dogs leading to the Ball. Would you find your way with a tux-suited man or a tartan-collared dog?  I don't remember the rules, the music, the endless tissues... just Mom handing over the scissors and watching me carve pictures into fairytale games. -- Chrissa

  Sharing with The Sunday Muse #126 . Swan maiden? First it was goose girl, child of the village who tumbles getting water, lost in the dark forest hanging over the gate, Born under a sign exploding over castle Built a hundred years ago And now? The swans are returning Midnight-black and friendly as pigeons! So I'm the swan maiden,  the candle in the mine, the peasantry's reparative marriage. A flock of black swans follows me Even in eider-white,  Even when I'm barely taller Than a heraldic wingspan. Go find your fixes elsewhere! Build a girl from tinker's bits Or from the ripped aprons Or from the forest's leaves! I'll march this flock back to the stars Before we fill the castle's pillows With dreaming, darkwing down. Okay. It's been a weird week. So far, I've had nightmares about having to shower in WalMart, my brother turning me into the cops for a joke so many times that the cops decided to go ahead and arrest me, and various other stressful situ

 Sharing today with The Sunday Muse #225 . I was asking the sky where the rest of me went Where the lace goes when it frays Where the net blows when it snags Where the party evaporates   The sky asks me where it goes when it breaks. Where parties form condensate Where net is woven into rays Where lace ravels into panes   I was asking the sky where the rest of me went. I find myself at the weekend sort of feeling at sea. I'd like to hit a local author festival as I'm in need of a little push/inspiration to get through that part of the draft that sends me off looking for new, shiny ideas. However, there isn't one nearby and I'm not really sure I'm up to peopling today. It's a pickle. :) -- Chrissa

 Sharing today with The Sunday Muse #224 .  Hospitality. We broke open the jar... Offered a magic couch, an ancient feast, the dust of ages for a pathway. We poured a goblet of our indiscretions Into the inkwell. You scrawled our names In a forgotten notebook. Washed your shorts. Ate breakfast. Stared at the screen.  Drank our stories with your coffee. And still we are dead, Coffered in your paperwork. Currently balancing a keyboard on Arthur...who isn't really a lapdog but who has already destroyed a dog gate today because of the thunder and is currently sitting on my lap and shaking and drooling. :( It's the kind of day where I'd really like to curl up with a good book and...er...snooze. Feeling guilty about not finishing stuff, though. And I can't really move at the moment.  Hope your writing week is amazing! -- Chrissa

  Sharing for The Sunday Muse #223 .  But the deconstruction comes at the chorus It's not the same thing: wings aren't flight The sky isn't the same day and night I'll turn my back on angel's secrets Because my wings were never white. The only time the window rolls down Your palm finally catches the slipstream There's a lift that pushes back, shoves; Flight doesn't float, it's always finding  The hardest push. -- Chrissa

  Sharing today with The Sunday Muse #222 (congratulations, Carrie!!!). Come and see the other poems! It's madness. You can see it. You can't see the music in that spiral. I can. *sigh*  Just like you can see the smoke. The kids'll be here soon. Then we'll hide it in the rack.  Play something safe. Sinatra. There's nothing safe in Vegas. We're not in Vegas. This is Texas. Seedy, oil-town Texas. And this? This particular spiral is madness out where the cows won't go. Give it here. I'll sleeve it. I don't even like the water.  It's brown and thick and rolls like it wants you off-balance. Like it knows the oil's moving through. You come in smelling like salt and staring at the yard  until even I think it's tilting. That salt's good for us. But this--I heard him play. He's nowhere near here. I bought him a guitar at seven. But she took him, sold it.  Bought that fiddle.  And then the devil taught him.  Put it away. The kids are here.

  Sharing with The Sunday Muse #221 . Carrie's bringing a great end-of-summer atmosphere with movie prompts.  Writers like a tight scene. An angry man talking about his father-in-law Who won't buy his wife a dog It's the only thing she wants At thirty, with two kids And the guy  Still won't Get her  A dog. It's not a bullet. Just a guy Who doesn't know why people  Just won't do the thing. Why the scene  is never tight. We visited a local author event today and I found myself drawn to the children's books rather than the inspo fiction (and the lack of poetry). Unfortunately, I don't read Spanish well enough to take home the story of the dog and the baby turtle...this might be a goal for the next several months. It was a really cute book and my dad is the family turtle rescuer, so I just might have to invest in my non-existent language skills. Both of us enjoy a good turtle story. And turtles carry the world, do they not?  -- Chrissa 

  spent the afternoon thinking there's no prompt, no conversation it extends into the quite grey no snow, just rain I could find stairs  at a mall, near the Waterway but I'm missing ascension in this no-prompt poem

 Sharing today with The Sunday Muse #220. Come & share a tale! Pick up the haunted book, open the cover.  You've been watching the glass for years Surely the specters deserve a voice.  Where have all the people gone? They are still walking the spectrum Watching for the Between store. Where else would you buy the sheets? Not that they wear sheets--just light Spun with dust drifting silk. Practical, are sheets. Familiar chores. That's not why you walk reflections Listening for subtle coughs. So many layers to the dim, flat world Now that sunlight shatters among Walkers and discount shadows. Learning to see the art of desecration Won't confine it to the deadly book. I worry too many think it's possible to win the apocalypse.  -- Chrissa

 Sharing today with The Sunday Muse #219 .  Blow the story over me, the last one, the first one; there's mustard and olive loaf sandwich left and the day isn't as hot as it will be.  Bless the day in Philadelphia when she moved, before the ballet recital, after the record when the wind was high as summer. She'll always blaspheme Texas, it's the hell that took her silk for denim, took her  balance for kids and hurricanes. Bless yourself when you sneeze, snotty thing all I'm telling you, under fairy skirts, what dance you're named after. Bored on the grass of this new park? Think-- I could be famous, and you could be meeting a queen of guitar screams. Believe those come with tutu and crinoline? Let me pull that fey illusion, quick, don't leave bandages on belief too long. Belly up to the table and lean close. Texas ain't the good court. It's too scarlet prideful and every string here shrieks. But really--queens get to scream when they will. Loud as you

  Sharing with The Sunday Muse #128 .     Let me swing through the small sins The ones that come with sugar  or gumballs All the fat-fingered chords pooling In the back of the throat, Rising inedible All the small sins that lit the lanterns The ones that signalled  for the demons Invisible freight trains shuddering By this keyboard mouth Slippery decibels We're rising stave by black-eyed trill Keeping our hands tight or stiffer still Let me swing through the small sins Before a lid breaks the kiss Sharply indelible So today contained a slight error in judgement. We ended up on a long-ish walk to a coffee shop in the middle of another day full of heat advisories because I don't navigate well based on Google maps. Also, if you ask me over and over again if I remember a place, I will absolutely say yes...because I remember the name, what it looked like indoors, etc...not because I have a strong feeling for where it's located. Do NOT ask me to navigate. Which leads to poetry wh

  Sharing with The Sunday Muse #217. Come be part of the conflagration. :)  Oh, they called the mob to celebrate But only the fire heard They called the mass to congregate But only the dry grass bowed A conflagration Called to prayer Hungry for light Hungry for air Oh, they called the mob celebrate Wearing flames in their hair They called the mass to congregate Faceless in the burning air.  Greetings and salutations. I'm not sure what to say--we're not celebrating the 4th this year (not that I'm prepared to cede one holiday to the authoritarian idiots in charge of our state, but our grass is still dry from the heat and we have a dog terrified of fireworks...so we're celebrating by bunkering down and watching Howling 2  at the gleefully deranged suggestion of my sibling) and otherwise I've turned our dead corn plants into the basis for this year's Camp NaNo project...it's turning into a weird year, the kind of year where I'm reading more horror than norma

 So. I've been watching my friends' feeds and listening to the commentary that's come out of the surfeit of poor decisions handed down by the US Supreme Court and the increasingly illegitimate Texas state government (you can't remain legitimate if you don't support ethical office holders, fail to support the state during a pandemic, or fail to resist a party platform upholding the basis of an insurrection) and feeling the fury and shock vibrate in my throat and chest.  I'm not articulate when I'm angry. I'm more likely to scream as if there was fire at the very bottom of my stomach and I'm trying to project it all the way to whatever has sparked the anger. I'm more of a break things than create things. And that's my failing. And it's the reason that I'm stepping away from writing.  I can't speak in the way that others can and have. There is no room for distraction in this moment.  I'm done.  -- Chrissa

  It's time to clean the little shed, it's time to clean "Our backyard" has a timer now There will be grass or swing sets or dogs Once again in sequence. Gardens might be dug once more, planted Right along this fence line.  It's time to clean the little shed, it's time. -- Chrissa

  Just to remind them of their place in keeping up the Savannah Platter, the Zebrites kept the color scheme in the Receiving Verandah geometric and black and white. Cebble had always lived just off the Platter, not far from this grand reception room, a gallop of a maybe twenty minutes. From this window, she could see arrival nodes winking and flashing, obscuring the savannah that stretched all the way to the edge of the sea, where the humans waited in a glass compound. Glass and whatever they’d brought with them. Cebble had seen that place in person once, learned how to say “city” from one of them, who’d then explained that people like her were considered “livestock” on the human planet. Apparently, this was a “magical” world because people like Cebble could speak. At least, that human had considered the translation orb as passing for speech. Not all of them did; making even a short visit uncomfortable. As alien as the Platter could be, there were few things as alien as that tower ss

 Sharing with The Sunday Muse #214 . This week it's poetry for the heat, no longer nascent, of oncoming summer. Every hour another warning vibrates my wrist. I lean toward the label beside the picture. The city is no longer metaphorically burning. I can feel the tiles, cool in the a/c and thick walls, through these thin sandal soles.  I move the to next image. It's full of rust. The label says it captures the riot of a city. This city isn't rioting. It's a beautiful, sunny day. A burning, sunny day.  Greetings and salutations! This weekend begins our summer hibernation. We're cleaning up a few rooms so that the dogs & James & I can have a cool spot in the house, away from the machines and windows, to curl up when necessary. I'm binging Halloween content, as well.   -- chrissa

  Sharing today with The Sunday Muse #213 . All alien worlds quake during colonization Eruptions are normal There is plenty of liquid under the surface And every new seed itches. Only the lucky allergens...astronauts...find Solid ground and grow. Apparently, part of the new normal around here is microwaving dog food. And using draft ideas as themes for creative endeavor...just not finishing the drafts. Also, growing Wookie corn in the backyard, stalking the backyard lizards, and feeling guilty every time I leave the house. Some of this should  have resulted in poetry...instead...allergies.  -- Chrissa

 The new houses wore gingham insulation and brick tweed It wasn't quite a Sunday, there was no longer a paddock Blue sky, like an advertisment, spread behind them The clasp of a suburban cloak printed like a magazine Whose pages once could be flown over but now Wrinkle and desaturate in the corner of the library  Or the back shelves of the used bookstore, not quite Literature, just the residue of memory Smelling not quite pleasant, seedy paper and ink still Selling new houses dressed in insulation and tweed.

  Sharing with The Sunday Muse #212 . Let's start a rumor of an urban legend When the sky fell hard for the blacktop Called itself Icarus and headed to the beach, pressing over 85 We were lying three to a hammock Under Keith's parents' beach house Back when his dad still gave the weather on Channel 5 When Icarus blew by Blue sky comet on the asphalt twilight Kissed our shoulders, lied. Breeze says everything gets bright When the sky blows through the night When the sky blows through the night Greetings and salutations! Glad to be back and writing. :)  -- Chrissa

Sharing with The Sunday Muse #210 . No industry where the sea has already eaten the road No wine where the dreams are salted, preserved No space for the story when water shoves the sand back, Takes another lick at the asphalt, Tastes the human toes, testing. Gave you the blue sky, the blue sea, the blue planet Gave you parts of the million years curling in your DNA Gave you my breath, gave you my breath, gave you Salt to savor your tears Salt to float your dreams If I could speak something other than flood If you could speak something other than words If we could speak the awe; if we could, if we could

The camera, at the time, was a heavy instrument And the film in canisters and the strap polishing his shoulder She'd been working for four hours, standing Resting a hip against the silver-cornered cabinet, Smoothing out her skirt, smiling, waiting out shoppers Daydreaming about the lights, dimming then brimming Spilling on her, soaking her with the ephemera  Of burning gas, transforming her clothes into dancewear.  The music shifts, rises. The customers sink to audience. But that was earlier. This is her break, she's just offstage, Grateful for the dimness near the wall.  She hides her nametag under her silky bowtie.  It's just fifteen minutes. Time enough to stroll, have a soda.  He's been setting up. Looking for empty displays. He catches the lights on her jewelry barge,  Becalmed in the middle of the mall's hallway Lit up for midway or Mississippi, full of silver. She's just a little further on,  one tired moment in the darkness of the shot.

  Borrowing the image from VisualVerseAnthology. Fifteen minutes to write 5-50 words based on this image. Contextless, glimpsed through a door-- Who painted this? Child or artist? I stare. A dark-suited woman  pauses nearby,  cell in hand, then pulls the door shut. A sliver of color remains, but James returns from restroom and we go back to the official exhibits,  labeled like pinned butterflies. It's been a long time since we've been to a museum and I miss the smell and the silence and seeing the texture of the art up close, not to mention the curious discoveries in unexpected corners.  -- Chrissa