August 2011
2 posts
1 tag
And all the towns we built, we built them so...
Paraphrased from Wikipedia with examples from...
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.’
February 2011
7 posts
2 tags
Call off the dogs, the lynched man must speak...
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,...
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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...
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.
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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...
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“Can’t we be gentle first, and honest later?”
Tar Baby, Toni Morrison (Prompt 25)
July 2010
2 posts
2 tags
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...
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Geography soils the sheets (Prompt 24, Written by...
Geography soils the sheets, once again. The thin-walled dorm rooms unanimously agree that the darling thoughts murmured into each other’s skins are of some meaning and every page we open in the bibles at random seems to suggest that we’ve stumbled upon something nice (and awesome and wonderful and great) but the earth rattles, of course, and lets us know, contritely: “Hello, sorry to interrupt,...
June 2010
3 posts
1 tag
More Than That!
dearoldlove:
Our mothers have the same middle name. How many more signs do you need?
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A Guide to Good vs. Evil (prompt #23, written by...
You don’t know whether something’s good or evil? Here are ten helpful tips:
One: turn it over, spin it on its side; knock on its solid black vest and listen to the echoes of swimming bullets.
Two: shoot at it and realize it’s immortal; talk calmly to it and realize it’s dead.
Three: twist off the lid of its skull with a firm grip and empty the contents onto your bed. Make separate piles for...
1 tag
November 2009
1 post
2 tags
Shaman (Prompt 22, Written by Celine)
Their whole love story is dry. They don’t cry or slobber or sneeze or piss about any of it. They don’t let out a single drop of liquid out of their love. It’s bone dry, like a nacho chip.
He resents her for that. He hates her.
“You wouldn’t even blink if I picked up and left,” he says.
“I would.”
He wishes she would cry when she says that, but she just blinks. She blinks because dust keeps...
October 2009
9 posts
1 tag
“It was easier to lock the door and kill the phone / Than to show my skin /...”
– “Wake” by The Antlers
(Prompt 22)
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Blind (Prompt 21, Written by Vlada)
“I’m primarily interested in questions of loneliness, The Future.” He chuckled to himself as he straightened his tie. “That’s just what interests me.”
“Mmm-hmm,” she responded, slurping her chocolate milkshake noisily. She wished a giant meteor would fall down to Earth and serendipitously interrupt the conversation. Interrupt it with Death.
“So.” His voice changed to a matter-of-fact tone....
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No interruptions (Prompt 20, Written by Celine)
She walks in through his door and he throws a pie in her face. Not a full pie, but a slice of one that he’s been munching on.
It tastes like apple.
“What the hell was that for?”
“Marching in here like you have a right to be here or something.”
And believe it or not, he is pretty angry about all of this, even though he’s not the one with a face full of...
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Leaving (Prompt 20, Written by Vlada)
You were sitting on that old rocking chair with the floral padding and I on the wooden bench when you asked me what you should do. I remember I was staring at my knees, specifically at the runs in my stockings. I could see my pale, hairy legs through the tears. You said what do you think I should do? and then you pushed yourself back with your feet and started rocking and the chair made a...
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Punishment 1, performed by Vlada (as demanded by...
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This is it (Prompt 19, Written by Celine)
He mumbles into her hair, this is it, maybe, this is it and all there is and maybe that is not such a bad thing.
She frowns, annoyed that he would even suggest that.
Of course it is a bad thing!
He disagrees.
I don’t think so.
He thinks maybe there is nothing wrong with marking time with second hand of the clock. Just let it all slip through their fingers, and giggle about it because it...
2 tags
Making Kittens (Prompt 19, Written by Vlada)
“I remember I was sitting on the couch, jean shorts and a tie-dye t-shirt. My hair was in a ponytail. That doesn’t matter, does it? Why would my hair be important? Anyway, my mom was holding this mug of tea—she’s always holding mugs of tea—and she was concentrating so intently on this puzzle. What was it… it was a cat! It was a bunch of kittens and balls of yarn, I don’t know. She...
September 2009
12 posts
1 tag
O Me! O Life!
By Walt Whitman
O ME! O life! of the questions of these recurring, Of the endless trains of the faithless, of cities fill’d with the foolish, Of myself forever reproaching myself, (for who more foolish than I, and who more faithless?) Of eyes that vainly crave the light, of the objects mean, of the struggle ever renew’d, Of the poor results of all, of the...
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Loneliness (Prompt 18, Written by Vlada)
One time I was so lonely, I wrote out an acrostic poem. It went like this: Liking Only Never Ever Loving You
Once I was so lonely that I attended a knitting circle and I was the only one without yarn or knitting needles and I found it much harder to knit without those two things. I watched the others knitting and it actually made me feel lonelier, which is not what I had come for.
The last...
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The most daring thing (Prompt 18, Written by...
Dear Kurt Vonnegut,
You said what young people should do with their lives today is ”Many things, obviously, but the most daring thing is to create stable communities in which the terrible disease of loneliness can be cured.”
And in response to that challenge, we, if I may speak on behalf of all young people, facebook. We tweet, bookmark, tag, blog. We email and msn. We text and browse. We read....
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“What should young people do with their lives today? Many things, obviously. ...”
– Kurt Vonnegut
(Prompt 18)
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Clang, clang! (Prompt 17, Written by Celine)
I sit and wait until he returns to us and say funny things about girls and wink and get us get out of here. The giant door into the castle tears open and in comes the redheaded mountain of a man; except he is no longer a man, or mountainous. As I look into the holes in his swollen head that see nothing but doughnut holes, I realize that he is screaming like a maniac. Sure, we are all maniacs...
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Crazy (Prompt 17, Written by Vlada)
When I was five years old, I talked to animals. I had conversations with them. I would say something and they’d respond. Sometimes I was approached! I saw ghosts, but I wasn’t scared of them. The ghosts were scared of me. They sat in my room while I was at school and when I came home they hid. When I fell, I fell up. And I walked on the ceiling. My bruises were in the shape of crescent...
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Salt (Prompt 16, Written by Celine) *late
Reasons why I cried when I first immigrated to Canada:
1. I wanted to explain how all of this felt (the rude culture shock and other consequences of uprooting one’s entire life and throwing it on foreign soil) to someone who might hear me, but I was mute.
2. I wanted to understand what was going on around me and be an active member of this world, but I was deaf.
3. I wanted to be able to...
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My First Dictionary (Prompt 16, Written by Vlada)
This one morning, I woke up and decided I didn’t want to speak English anymore. You may be thinking but you’ve written this in English! and that’s because I failed. Obviously, right? It didn’t seem so obvious to me at the time. This is how I went about it: first, I decided I’d work on forgetting really big words, like apothecary and lascivious. This was fairly easy, actually. It wasn’t long...
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“I cried in English, I cried in French, I cried in all the languages, because...”
– Miranda July, “Ten True Things” from No One Belongs Here More Than You
(Prompt 16)
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Your Brain and Your Heart (Prompt 15, Written by...
Dear Samantha,
Last night I had a dream about you. In my dream I was looking around inside your brain and then your heart. I got to look at your insides. Have you ever seen that one episode of The Magic School Bus where the class takes a field trip inside Arnold’s body? It was sort of like that. But I wasn’t really looking at your cells. I wanted to write to tell you what I found.
...
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I can live like this fine, fine, fine, fine,...
Elisabeth Forster-Nietzsche: You can’t live like this.
Friedrich Nietzsche: I can live like however I like live like however….
E: I’m your sister, and I am telling you, you can’t live like this. There are rats here, Fritz. Nothing to eat; all your food is rotten. Your bed stinks, you stink. You have syphilis. You are practically blind and deaf.
F: I can live like this fine, fine, fine,...
August 2009
24 posts
1 tag
Heart’s a Mess by Gotye
(Prompt 15)
2 tags
The Sea (Prompt 14, Written by Vlada)
“Where is it?” she asked.
I held out my hand. She cupped it and pointed at the bit of blood on my palm with her other hand.
“This?”
“This.”
We stood there for a little while, my hand in hers. I waited.
“How did it happen?”
“Sharks.”
“Oh, wow.” She nodded in interest, staring at my wound. “I would have thought a paper cut.”
“No,” I said, “Sharks. Three of them. And they were...
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My blue sea (Prompt 14, Written by Celine)
My blue sea.
My peace and most boring hour. My war. My weapon and wound. My, mine.
My lovely mother and boyfriend. My Lolita and my Old Man. My Tadzio, my Underground Man, my rebel from waist down. Me.
My salvation and sin, my one gleaming proof of the breath in the summer (you can see the breath in the winter but not in the summer and you need the proof to know that it is there).
My...
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'FEVER' (Prompt 13, Written by Vlada)
I was 12 years old when I found the tape. My sister, seven at the time, and I were downstairs in the basement rummaging for a pair of blue water goggles. Sara stood in a floral bathing suit with her skinny arms wrapped around herself. She made shivering noises. I was wearing my bathing suit too, but I’m very warm-blooded. I moved aside a box of encyclopaedias (A through H) to search through a...
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Blaze of no glory (Prompt 13, Written by Celine)
We – you and I – touch the small hand and turn it, backwards. It’s four o’clock, three o’clock, two o’clock – and then it is midnight. Someone is knocking from inside our chests right on time (as if they had made an appointment two weeks ago), because it is a burning living room in there – windows blackening, floors snapping, TV screaming murder, couches muttering their last words, curtains...
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Tom (Prompt 12, Written by Vlada)
Tom was this boy I knew. I write was for two reasons: one, I knew him until we drifted apart and moved away from one another, which is when I stopped knowing him except in the past tense, and two, because he is no longer alive. And when I write that I knew him, I mean I knew him. I knew what he was thinking about when he heard something upsetting in the news, I knew the location of his...
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You just get to eat them (Prompt 12, By Celine)
The Little Red Riding Hood is your lady in red. An exuberant flag, wailing warning! warning! warning! like Norma was to Kennedy, and Ana, to Dillinger.
If you had given up the chase through the woods half way, maybe you wouldn’t be here in an old lady’s bed, bleeding. Your stomach would be closed shut, rather than open for the winds to rot away at.
But it’s too late now. She was there, you...
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“You can’t see what you are and i see everything. You’re a wolf.”
– Moonstruck (1987)
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Message Inbox (Prompt 11, Written by Vlada)
Had to take my jacket
off at security. It smells
like u.
From: Mark Cell
2:13pm 14-AUG-09
How will i sleep alone?
From: Mark Cell
2:16pm 14-AUG-09
Forgot my toothbrush in
ur bathroom
From: Mark Cell
2:29pm 14-AUG-09
Boarding. Wonder what
u r doing. Probably
eating peanut butter
From: Mark Cell
3:06pm 14-AUG-09
Baby, im sitting next to
a baby
From: Mark Cell
3:31pm...
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I mourn you (Prompt 11, Written by Celine)
I say bye (or see ya, later, talk to you soon, take care, we’ll see each other), and you say bye too – but I don’t believe a word of that because I can still call you and message you and webcam you. I can still talk to you, if I wanted, and post on your facebook wall and twitter you. It’s not hard. You will be reduced to a ring tone on my cell, an icon on my screen, and a series of letters, with...
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Honey (Prompt 10, Written by Vlada) *Extension
Honey is the only food without an expiry date. Honey means forever. Honey means you’re the sweetest and I want you to mix this in with your peppermint tea; I want you to taste how sweet you are. Flowers just sit passively in a vase and then they wilt and die. Flowers mean here’s something pretty you can look at for a few days and then you can clean up the mess and throw them in the garbage. ...
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West Coast, by The Coconut Records