'could i, a slip between cracks
would i find to the narrows'
'go sleeping on those hills,'
she suggested, offered, obliged
the moorlands her finger drew
'lichened stone to rest a head;
a blanket of peat to cover you
and heather to tincture your sleep'
i did as bid, grew antlers thorned
as i slumber a top that tor
i fell betwixt place and moor
having given self to evermore
evermore
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evermore
call in Storm
feral you, on petite, lithe and narrow
dancing on the edge of betweens
with stolen kisses on slender promise
while others argue, deaf to your muse
bound within the must and dust of
parchment giants lining every room
a wink, a smile, and a theft once more
then,
we raise twin hands, call in StormTo like, click comments or:
call in Storm
Forfeit
Here’s another short bit of fiction based on writing prompts from Jolene Rice. They are the following four items with the only rule being that you cannot kill off your main character
- attacked by squirrels
- what nobody wants to talk about
- mascot for a professional team
- animal psychic
Apologies offered in advance.
I do lost cats, mostly. Colic in horses if the vet’s backed up. Twice a year somebody’s parrot stops talking and I sit with it for an hour and tell the family what they already know, which is that the parrot wishes they would ask for more than “Polly wants a cracker.” One, in particular, had a secret habit of shouting “Fucking hell!” whenever the house was empty, it told me. Practiced it all day long, most days, by his reckoning.
(more…)To like, click comments or:
Forfeit
three o’clock moon
she ghosted me through
with otherside push
and we danced
how we danced
all bone and lithe
under the three o'clock
moon
dead man's bells singing
as she fell to arms weeping
laughter staining corners
of eyes
"what will you do?
what do you say?"
"yes, i agree," replied i
and slept on the mound
given myself over...To like, click comments or:
three o’clock moon
Half-penny thoughts — 29jul26
Ever get that whole, “oh, piss on it all” moods?
No angry so much as just exhausted by trying to live in a world that doesn’t seem to much care for you or what you do? A world that insists you stay in your place at the margins because your clockwork is not in full synchronization with all the other Barbie and Ken influencers that get paid to try to turn us into a commercial product (or, at least, someone who endlessly consumes)?
Or, maybe just weary at being the only person who believes in holding doors open for another person (regardless of gender), or letting a car merge ahead of you in rush hour traffic (typically to get the bird flipped at you because you slowed down to do so)?
Or maybe trying to do something other than what a prompt into an AI chatbox can do: music, writing, art, opinion, philosophy, (or, I don’t know, make the sparkliest rhinestone jacket anyone has ever rhinestoned), what have you — only to see people cheer on AI slop or write a “roses are red, violets are…” composition while you are greeted with crickets? And a jacket Liberace would have envied.
Or where someone says “It’s been a while since we spoke,” acting as if it was more like “last winter”, but was closer to 20 years? And then thinking it will be as if it were last winter indeed, when you know for a near fact that you might not speak for another 10 years after they satisfy their need to say they kept in touch, or discover that you can’t go back after 20 years with the click of twin ruby slippers and chant, “there’s no place like home”.
You get a choice most of the time: take one pill to buy into the delusion and conform. Or take the other pill and stay beyond the pale.
Looking at one hand, then the other. Pausing. Contemplating. Navel gazing. Philosophizing…
Eh, fuck ’em. Toss both pills over the palings, ignore everything and walk the thin, liminal places they ignore. Piss on it all.
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Half-penny thoughts — 29jul26
bog bodies
why phantom chasing
through time's forest mists --
an echoed tether stretched taut?
hush now, and forget
the voices are will o' wisps
drawing to thorny bramble
tangled in foxfire's decay
leave those bog bodies to lay
reunions come soon enoughTo like, click comments or:
bog bodies
cautionary tales
if my curses frighten
it is only because
they are wellearned
cast a bit of salt
and hold your poppet
close and tight tonight
morning will surely come
as it must, mustn't it?
oh, my lovey love...To like, click comments or:
cautionary tales
limbs and stones
limbs and stones and
sticks and bones and
snicker snack those
limbs will crack and
bones will grind
between twin stones
while pricked with sticks
while you are
hagstone peering and
hagstone fearing
cold iron cold iron
cold iron cold iron
cold iron cold iron
cold iron cold iron
cold iron coldTo like, click comments or:
limbs and stones
Only Just
There was a dreaming of that narrow living room, and my place directing from the far corner: move stage right, turn down bass, less delay, crouch as if in pain, sing it again…
You thought some suggestions were madness, but weren’t we all actors in the theatre of the absurd? That’s okay, I would find myself saying again, I pushed too hard and I understand that you cannot see what the madman sees.
Ignore them when they said that bass can’t sing, can’t chord, just play that thing. And so he did, like he was wont to anyway. I was both superfluous and absolutely necessarily all the same.
What use was my lingering? Affection, I suppose. Maybe a little spite as well.
Just like that faded dream.
Along came a summons. Paired with a wonder: Was it only just a dream?
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Only Just
Wandered wood
I think you wandered wood with me, back before we were young — your laughter trailing out behind you in scarlet ribbons as I follow, stepping over the old deadfall log, under the lichened overhanging stone. We wore horns, you and I, mine forked fingers and yours living bone, and we tore through the overgrowth, and under ossified bone.
Hallo, hallo, you said to me, I have become oak. And you stood tall and elder on the hill over the bog. The bone white birch laughed as they swayed under your canopy and the frogs’ voices rose to a terrible storm.
For my part, I longed to be fox and I curled my burning tail around we for added warmth in the den you offered up for to be my home. I barked as the moon hid her face behind a mask of clouds, content to be held within you.
And we held things that way until the autumn came and then winterfall, the burning of my tail meant to keep us warm.
Through cruel months we held.
It was the waking that broke the spell.
How I hated that dismal sound. That breaking, shattering our song.
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Wandered wood