A Weed on The Curb

This is one of the prompt images Carrie brought in for WordCrafters last Wednesday. The prompts this week were multifaceted and I chose a different direction during the meeting but really liked this image. Couldn't think of a good direction until today. Which might have to do with this week bringing in all the summer humidity and most of the heat. And mosquitoes. Definitely in the mood to get the non-volunteer sunflowers in the ground to see how they do compared to the ones the birds have scattered among the pots and bricks and grass. -- Chrissa  I know the man in the moon, he rents the apartment on the third floor. Far corner, to the left. See him in the laundry room some nights. There's a woman who keeps a rabbit--no pets allowed, but we don't notice. She's on the first floor but you can see the fur gleaming in the window Nights when the moon's doing his laundry. There's a woman who wears those crochet dresses, you know the ones? Like we're all watching a ...

 Spring mushrooms and onion blooms, these are the things Spring in Texas is made of. 

There was a seed , there was a tree Then there came a motor and an edge An in delicate labor and now a stump Snuffling the day, restless to rampage A brain torn from the soil Now a new red boar Growling through the foliage : No kneel ing before the cart No pause before the charge No mercy at the root This past week's WordCrafters meeting included a plethora of prompt ideas, including writing from a gardening or nature-based perspective, a word list, a suggested beginning sentence, and a collection of images. I used the word list (the green words above are from the list) and maybe, in a sideways fashion, the nature-based perspective.  And then there were the images. For some reason lately, I've been noodling through two prompts on Wednesdays, writing one out for sharing and keeping the other to turn over during the week. The image this week? A woman drumming light. It caught my eye and then my brain and then it embedded itself into an old idea that I'd abandoned years ago a...

 I was reminded earlier today that I have a blog. A blog that I haven't visited--much less updated--since January of this year (2024). The idea of having a blog felt surreal and I realized that the past several months have seen a few semi-drastic changes (new jobs, an inability to finish reading/writing projects, a slow wearing away of some formerly close social ties) resulting in a feeling of having been suspended in the past but no longer being supported by...anything.  Am I still even interested in writing? Who are these new characters who are demanding more traditional fantasy settings? Am I coming back to the mineral-eating rats and the dwarves who raise them? Do I need to stop attending my writing group to write? Should I just pat these new characters on the head and tell them it's been fun but they should run off and play elsewhere for now?  I feel like I'm entering my Sarcastic Gen X phase. Maybe rediscovering it.   Or falling back into fantasy, on the o...

 Salutations, ReaderPeople! Just to catch you up on the Filling-in-the-Gaps TBR, I've read the books for 1973 and 1980 and have switched out 1984's book several times but have finally settled on Dragons of the Autumn Twilight. I might end up switching out 2023 for a poetry book, depending on how the next two novels go. I'm going to update my Goodreads once all the books are done, filling in those gaps. I'm also going to sideswipe the GarbAugust reading event (do the prompts for each week but skip the bingo, etc.), possibly reading Alan Dean Foster's Krull  for week 3 (novelization or book by famous person). I'm going to have to locate books for the rest (Week 1: Category Romance or Men's Adventure; Week 2: Paperbacks from Hell or Vintage Smut; Week 4: Anything Goes)...I'll have to skim Paperbacks from Hell  to see if there's anything my weak stomach can handle.  And then there's the writing. I've been finding NaNoWriMo/prompts really distract...

 I think I picked the wrong candle for the computer room because right now I'd really like to sneeze but I can't really take a deep breath. So--tomorrow this candle moves to the den and I stop Vick's flashbacks while typing.  What's up this afternoon? I recently watched a CriminOlly video asking whether he'd read a book published in every year he'd been alive (per his Goodreads' list). Immediately, I had to discover whether or not I  had a book from every year I'd been alive on my  Goodreads list. I did not (which doesn't mean I haven't read books published in those years, just that I haven't bothered to fully populate my Goodreads from childhood forward. This meant I now needed to read at least five books to populate those years.  Which meant that I needed to raid our bookshelves to find books from 1973, 1980, 1984, 1989, and 2023. Interlude for lots of sneezing, being asked what I'm doing, knocking a stack of books on one dog, and reali...

 So. My actual screensaver called me out today. Have I been writing much poetry? Is the doggerel below P O E T R Y? Yeah, probably not. However. The real story is that I'm working my way through a few stories for Camp NaNoWriMo. At almost halfway through the month, I'm still not sure what will end up under the pen on a day-by-day basis but I've added to several.  My reading has been similar. Lots of initial chapters or initial handful of chapters but very, very few final chapters completed. I'm thinking about taking a day and just clearing out my zine basket. Summer heat settled in early, so I haven't been doing any outdoor reading, but zines are pretty quick and I should be able to finish several while the squirrels raid the birdseed. :)  Hope you're having a good writing/reading summer! It must have been a movie, black and white, Watched when I was younger, maybe sick, Glancing between Mom cleaning and the screen. A father and his daughter in a lighthouse New ...

Phalanxes of plastic ducks: wizards, barbarians-- the occasional detective-- swirl in the giant conundrum. Plastic dolls (fashion dolls?), no judgement on brand or aisle or hair, especially now, hear the canard-verse via pathways laid down in heat, in formless transformations. They know the wars. They know the strategies. They know the tidal energies. Or so Mandy says, holding a damp doll by the hair, dripping on the carpet, sleepy as an oracle  fresh from a hot spring [or a bath] prophesying plastic. It's been a week since The Sunday Muse. And I'm working on the Indie Summer Read/Writeathon (currently reading Rocket Science  and enjoying the drama) and working on other projects...but I find that I'm missing my Sunday poetry. :)  -- Chrissa

  Sharing with The Sunday Muse #261 , for our final week. Thank you for reading & interacting with these poems over the past several years.  Cold blood works the fire bushes:  marble, serpent, maybe.  Snakehearted limestone gathers a full bouquet.  Line the tables, cook the feast over the flowers, Hang the bottles from the marble bodies. Gods are sporting tonight; Dancing under the empty jars Eyes clear as the darkness, Deep as the heavens. Hang bottles to catch the sparks, Bottles to cast from the shore Already burning from their nearness. Bottles to kindle a thousand Epics, hearts, madnesses, parties... Bottles to seed the fire bushes On some colder, newer shore. I'm not sure whether I'll be returning to weekly poetry for the time being. I might turn this blog to reading to inspires me to get through a grim and treacherous TBR that seems to swell with books that aren't quite read, even if bookmarks appear in their shallows. From June through September I'm ...

  Sharing with The Sunday Muse #260  with much appreciation to Carrie & Shay & everyone. Just a reminder: if you have a poetry book, please drop a title in the comments. My TBR won't thank you, but I will. :)    I drive by the armadillos, dead where they fell. Sunlight is so heavy it folds into damp shimmers. All the roads are widening, dispersing the ditches, Grinding out parking lots, killing slow steps. I speed up; crisp winter in the passenger seat. We will arrive at the store soon; I will drag her Chill, into the store. Breathe for both of us. Brightness distorts the lots, now grown gigantic. Roads need blood, the state needs the kills. We will make it through barriers if we wear them: Dead armadillos, caliche dust, gunmetal sunshine.

  Sharing with The Sunday Muse #259 . I'm the last of the fairy band  all our tricks given away  I follow wings and a sticky strand above the storm and day Farewell is a nightly tune this became goodbye An elegy trilled to carnival beat stained blue as the sky Strong as the scent of  popcorn May cola hold you fast The rope grows thin, the music faint Of the fairies, I'm the last. I am sad that this will be the penultimate poem I share with The Sunday Muse , which has been constant while I've been an irregular participant. Thank you, Carrie, for giving us this space each week!  It's been a privilege to be able to read what has been a chapbook, generated every week, by a committed and talented group of poets, several of whose books are now part of my library. Please drop a link or title below if you'll have something coming out (or that is already out). Best wishes to everyone (I'll hopefully be back next week but I'll be more emotional then...) and happy Moth...

 "No, Meredith, he's not going to...That car'll make it to the moon before she..." Light blazed across the screen.   Hate the way sunset catches these wings. Pinions still ash and heat shimmer, far enough from my back that they're just an illusion. Like the sarcasm I learned from this . He flipped the phone over to watch the sunset in the case. For a heartbeat, until glory stole even that view from his nerveless fingers, everything was light-washed, clean . He banged his fists to his knees. You could add all the sarcastic narration you liked, no angelic voice--no angel's human-seeming face--would trouble social media. Maybe they didn't need him. Didn't need his lessons. He threw his arms over the back of the old couch, kicked his feet out into the scrub . Maybe someone would figure out how to capture a video testament. Ask for help. Not for him.  Carrie brought us a group of great prompts this week but I've been really distracted lately and didn...

  Sharing with The Sunday Muse #253 .  A vine sprawls over the post, leaning over the railing, pointing down the culvert. A poodle stumbles to a saunter at pressure while her boy shuffles up into a yard  to avoid a parked car, a puddle of old pollen, and the sly glances of squirrels.  The coyote feels the vine pointing and suggests the girl tear her photo, revealing she's just another vine. The poodle strains but the boy doesn't see and the squirrels don't tell. I think a summer day has become lost in the middle of spring and I'm just ready for summer's hibernation. Poets hibernate in summer, right? -- chrissa

  Sharing with The Sunday Muse #252. Come, this anniversary of the winter nap where the soft soil warms like stone And the summer bears a rolling fealty Weeping thunder above the ice Shearing sleep from breathless bones. Right now, I'm seriously behind on a draft for an early summer festival and struggling. Poetry might thin on the ground right now...but who can pass up the white wolf in the forest? -- Chrissa

  Sharing with The Sunday Muse #250 . Maybe. where the pollen falls i have been in love where the bees danced i have been in love where the thunder footfalls i have been in love where the steel has sung i have been in love violence has romanced my love away what kiss will wake the city now? 

  Sharing with The Sunday Muse #249. I.  His guitar set things on fire. Not Eric--he could feel the heat but it never singed his skin. It never got as hot as this Texas afternoon that burned his neck and baked through his suit and made the road he'd been stalking seem like an asphalt river barely held in place by the gravel and weeds. He couldn't keep in the guitar in a case but the sun didn't seem to hurt it, even if Eric sometimes remembered it was goblin-made.  That was an impossibility, though. He hadn't wanted to start a brushfire; walking in the sun in this suit was killing him. Sitting on the couch that had probably fallen from a truck seemed like a good idea. He'd discovered a folded sheet in his pocket, some rag full of tiny goblin advertisements, bluebonnet souls, cheap potions, gar-heart strings that prevented the dragon-gut fires...he closed his eyes. If he ignored the curious flames now reading over his shoulder, the growling couch, and the heat shimmer...

  Sharing with The Sunday Muse #247 . it's the season of putting away the angels we have tissue paper for the delicate wings but the solid bodies get a brief sheet paint and plaster chips are the years' way, the mouse way, of marking use the putting out and the taking down any accidents that happen in season store remembrance in the small holes bitten in the sacred while it looks the other way -- Chrissa

 Sharing with The Sunday Muse #246 , in the spirit of the Very Serious Super Mario from SNL. Ann climbs to the roofline She's never been this big, never this strong. Heather's not a doll but Ann holds her close. The lake is tasting the house, considering; Dry land was such a new thing, once. Ann keeps an arm on Heather, looks down. The lake doesn't speak or its thousand tongues Chuckle like birdsong, whine like chitin bows. Ann speaks Heather's tongue and one other. She calls to the patchwork lands around I am your daughter, I have your child.

 Sharing with The Sunday Muse #245 .  Let us burn the world.  Burnish it ash and ember!  Let gold run like water Gild the beaches  with precious oceans. Let us hold the world Close around our flame. Let what remains Gilded by our warmth, sustain. Spring cleaning season is here and I'm looking at the pile of writing projects and wondering what needs to be filed and what needs to be expanded and finished. Honestly, with the increase in censorship in the US, writing and reading feels pretty pointless right now. Maybe everything needs to be filed and I  should go sit with the birds. :)  -- Chrissa

  Sharing with The Sunday Muse #244 . Photo Manipulation by Artist Okan Ozel This picnic takes place in the rain. Tomatoes, cheese, and ash.  Wear your lies pave', rhinestoned. Your sandwich rests on the tracks. This discordant grill whistles on, to crush the coins you need to pass. Five chords born backboned, already crumpled to cash.  Is it wrong that I've been watching craft videos lately (painting, sewing, etc.) and am now thoroughly jealous of the idea that some  projects can be filmed and completed in a week? I'd like to be able to do that with the novella I'm currently working on...one week to transform an idea from scribbled in a notebook to printed in a book, all shiny and ready to be read. Tune in next week for Notebook to Novella! -- Chrissa