And all the towns we built,
we built them so the lions could escape,
so they could roam in houses of their own.
The council wasn’t there, just answer phone
The humans disappeared, they left their homes.
So the lions lived alone.
And all the towns we built,
we built them so the lions could escape,
so they could roam in houses of their own.
The council wasn’t there, just answer phone
The humans disappeared, they left their homes.
So the lions lived alone.
So the lions lived alone.
[Flash 9 is required to listen to audio.]
Paraphrased from Wikipedia with examples from Billie Holiday (Prompt 27, Written by Anna)
A plosive is a stop consonant in which the vocal tract is blocked;
All air flow ceases.
The occlusion may be done with the tongue
Example, ‘fruit.’
Or with the lips,
Example, ‘crop.’
Call off the dogs, the lynched man must speak (Prompt 27, Written by Celine)
Call off the dogs, the lynched man must speak. He hangs from the highest branch of the brightest tree, so when he speaks the sound of his voice is booming. Once upon a time, on this planet, a man swung back and forth in a pair of soiled underwear. His tongue was long, and he said:
“People are mysterious to each other. I am that mystery. What is uglier than me? I am the martyr for their hatreds, their evils. They want me to be their voice. That is what they want. But I won’t let them take that from me too. I will resist, because I am a superhero. I may have been made into the ugliest thing in the universe but at least I will speak on my own behalf and say: ‘This Happened.’ I, the lynched man, exist and this is true for all time, everywhere. I do not go away because you want me to. Hey, down on the ground, remember my body. See the color of my skin, it screams for you. Touch my hair, my clothes, my stiff hands - they cry out to you. They all ask for your anger. Look closely at my bruised body, because it needs you to remember.”
Hey Cleveland (Prompt 26, Written by Celine)
Hey Cleveland, are you a loser? How does the floor taste? How does the ceiling look?
Hey Cleveland, do you remember, just a handful of minutes ago, how the ring seemed no bigger than a living room? Now look at it, it’s the size of an ocean and strangers are coming to carry you out, to save you from drowning. You were a giant, just a handful of minutes ago. Now look at you, you’re covered in sweat and breathing like an old man.
This is how it goes: You know all the risks. You know what you’re up against, but you never ever believe you will go down like that. You know you’re weak but you believe you’re invincible. You know in your head that you could die out here on the mattress, but in your breast you think that’s a hypothetical until he hits you and it hurts, it hurts like god shit fuck.
And then you go down like a tree in an empty forest, to the non-existent beat of the crowd screaming for more sweat.
Hey Cleveland, are you still there?
A look for a look (Prompt 26 written by Anna )
At least it’s symmetrical, his
raised fists of defeat the swimming pool reflection
of triumph.
There are no ripples in the crowd. Like lego blocks
they are rectangles of colour:
edges, corners.
only two men have hands, swaddled in cloth at
right angles to the curves of their
arms.
It took me a while to see the referee. His
head looked like a knee-cap.
Blended in.
Muhammad Ali vs. Cleveland Williams
Houston Astrodome (80ft above the ring)
1966 // Photo: Neil Leifer
(Prompt 26)
(Source: dubliner)
Apologies— (Prompt 25 written by Anna )
The truth is I haven’t written anything worth reading in four years and before that one poem was a stretch of adolescence and writing names I liked in lists of happy families.
When I do string sentences together I half close my brain’s lids to them—ignore punctuation in favour of long dashes (what rule could govern the quick dashdash?) and make parenthetical statements containing statements that belong outside of brackets, or italicize— I mean italicize!— instead of using each word’s internal rhythm to pattern its own emphases.
Each act of writing begins with apology. For absence, forgetfulness, anxiety (dear friends I owe you emails, letters, postcards I found funny, valentines made with glue sticks, glitter, love); (dear self I owe you the embarrassing evidence of journal entries) ; (and, finally—but there is no more to say about my writing)— bits of stories, lines of poems, a title— (that is either gentle or honest)
Can’t I write first (second, third, fourth) and (sorry) later?
“Can’t we be gentle first, and honest later?”
Tar Baby, Toni Morrison (Prompt 25)
Structure of the Earth (prompt 24, by Vlada)
When I saw that you had updated your status just seven minutes ago to ‘is going to lie down in the park,’ I grabbed my blanket and left. I knew that you had probably brought a water bottle and pair of sunglasses, but here on the opposite side of the planet the owls were out and I carried my keychain flashlight for where the streetlights were spent. I lay down in the park with the blanket overtop my body, not underneath it (like I needed another layer between the two of us!). I thought about your own body so close to mine, separated only by atoms, my clothes, the earth’s crust, upper mantle, mantle, outer core, inner core, and then the outer core again, the mantle, upper mantle, crust, your own blanket probably, your shirt, your atoms. Apart from all those things, we were touching. I fell asleep in the park, my stomach aligned with yours, my legs touching your legs, my head resting on your own, my palm overtop your palm, a few layers between us.
