Starlight, Cafe

 

The coffee is cool; oh, there was a story.

You just missed it, wrapped in fire,

smelling like espresso and ash.

Christmas ghosts and patrons alike

haunted our table, smoke-thin,

where it was sitting, sipping.

I'd offer you a new cup, full and hot,

but...you'd have to tell it cold.

Maybe your skin is...?

But no, I see that you're as chill

as I; masked as I. Ah well.

Stories burn nearby.

For The Sunday Muse. This week I wanted to talk about stories and the way that flicker down to embers at this time of year. I've been thinking about all the drafts that remain layered in notebooks and the way that this year ends in that indefinite space, with unread books surrounding me in a fort built of blankets, a chaise lounge, chairs, and bookshelves. Part of the weirdness of this year has been building spaces all around the house that are nooks for reading and writing and then...neither reading nor writing anything from beginning to end. 

Next year (next week, just over the horizon), I'm thinking about writing to the family I've been mostly unable to see this year. Finishing novels just for them. Next year, I'd like to celebrate a spin on the Icelandic tradition of books for Christmas by giving several of them those books, written to them, for them. An impossible goal for improbable times, yes?

-- Chrissa

Christmas 55

 

There's a creature smothering

in the ice blue sea,

caught like a cave painting

in the year's thick ice.

I can drive over tundra,

downshifting to holiday--

the gifts are wrapped,

family called,

food cooked.

At some point, though,

I'm going to need that ax.

The emergency one

I've been told rests 

in my library.

Sharing to the Friday 55 this morning. Wishing everyone a cozy day and a good book (and coffee or cocoa or tea). I'm going to be shoring up the book fort because fireworks started in our neighborhood last night and I have a feeling Arthur is going to need a good place to hide. 

-- Chrissa

Scheme Season

 

Light days are coming and I should prepare;

now, in the cool, the grey, and the drear

schemes for the resolute

sneak softly near.

Long days approach and thus ready at need

are plot's dark, gem-solid seeds.

Cold ground at my wrist

holds them beneath.

Resolutions bore me.

Tis the season for schemes.

Schemes or ghost stories. Waiting out the rain. Counting down the last days of 2020. Also, I can't take the credit for the idea of Scheme Season--the phrasing was part of a Bernadette Banner IG post regarding planning for 2021. Who hasn't had a moment of thinking schemes would be more fun?

Also, wishing all of you who celebrate a very merry Christmas! And, of course, good food, warmth, and poetry for everyone. :) This isn't our yard, but it's a sentiment that I approve of:  cocoa and dragons! 

Sharing this week with The Sunday Muse and Poets and Storytellers United. Come read & share. Or just read. :) Happy Holidays!!

-- Chrissa

WordCrafters Wednesday Prompt

WordCrafters Wednesday Prompt: White Christmas/Holiday/New Year/Calendar of Days

Calendar of Days 

By book, by title, by shirts hung, by towels folded

by words written, by photos taken, by photos printed,

by birthdays, by holidays--secular and sacred.

By calls to my parents, by calls from my nephew.

By post, by like, by share. By meltdown,

by panic attack, by late night, by nightmare,

by number of Disney shows watched 

after midnight.

By candles burned, by notebooks filled, by 

scones eaten, by the wheel of daily medication,

by walks in the park.

By the days beyond 2020. 

Please note--the image is from Pexels (Bich Tran: Writing in a Planner)...maybe 2021 is the year I'll embrace the bullet journal. Probably not, though. Are there that many things I need to track? If you bullet journal, what are your best tips for doing more than one month at a time? 

I'm not a stats person, but this is my last WordCrafters post for the year, so here are a few stats:

• 63 books read 
• Favorite poetry books: Somewhere to Come From (L. Lewis), Every Song Is My Mother's Arms (C. Van Horn), We Were All Someone Else Yesterday (Omar Holmon)
• 4 novella drafts 
• 100 poems blogged

Because the majority of this wouldn't be possible with this group, a huge thank you to everyone and a crazy Muppet cheer for Carrie for everything that she's done--those poems listed above? From Carrie's prompts. The fact that we're still meeting, despite lacking a library building and in the middle of a pandemic is down to Carrie's amazing ability to overcome, not to mention her creating and maintaining The Sunday Muse for weekly prompts and poetry community. An entire cast of Muppet cheers! Yea, Carrie!!

I'm not ready for goals for 2021. I'm working on a Bastian Creek fable & re-reading Art & Fear. 2020 finally revised my go-to anxiety dream:  it's now realizing that I've been shopping & am not wearing a mask. I'm glad that there are still Christmas lights in the neighborhood.

Thanks for being part of this blog. 

-- Chrissa

We Become Mountains

 

First, we’re close enough to the grass to hear the singing light;
the buzz of every velvet thought before the carapace wears hard.
And then there’s the time when all the willows come to the river,
Wash their toes, gild and vermeil their hair, whisper supple ripples
down the water. The oaks hear this from further in the grass. 
All the roots are bound with mycelium dreams, drunk from rain and river. 

The spreading soil grows loose, down to the limestone. 

You feel it, gradually, as the body separates from the pointed soil.
One night, everything laces close to the bone and digs in.
Loosens, sloughs away. But eventually—the bone is set.

Once upon a grid, there will be soundings and the deep root 

of buildings, humming with the electric thoughts, itchier than roots.

Evanescent. And the bright and the velvet and the flexible and the loose
Will settle around this mimicry of mountains. And we’ll go, too,

bodies free of the riverine dreams and ready to climb
into the business ranges, out along the commercial ridges,
peeling open the cans of processed song and turning on
buzzing light. Eventually, though, the songs taste different,
the light settles on our skin in ridges and rings and we know.
We will become mountains, the underlying. 

The hard fact of yesterday which is recognized only viscerally,

gently, by the roots or the hollow caves in the mimic mountains,

by the lovely pastel geographies of how the land moves
slowly, sometimes, into the planes beneath the parkland.

It's the goal-end of the year, the time when new months are plotted, resolutions anticipated, and the year that was has a giant, exploding crystal ball dropped on it because IT TOTALLY DESERVES IT. December finds me opening unread books, reading a few chapters or lines or pages and abandoning them back on the stack. I pretend that I have goals for finishing the things I have started. I pretend that it's totally normal to be pissed off at the guy who was whistling Christmas carols as he left the Dr.'s office yesterday (where I was for a minor check-up)...because PUT YOUR MASK OVER YOUR FACE, DUDE. I empathize with every fragile ornament we put on the tree and fight the urge to tell my partner to just put it back in the wrapping and maybe it'll be okay for another year. And I wonder what this year will be like, when it's the past that's a new year is built upon.

Sharing with The Sunday Muse (thanks to Carrie for a cool prompt & sorry for the shouty follow-on) and Poets and Storytellers United.

-- Chrissa

Brilliance

 

WordCrafters Wednesday Prompt: BRILLIANCE

It can be the brilliance of light upon a tree in winter, or a brilliant mind, anyway or concept you can use the term is fair game.

My Response:

We put up the lights. Then we waited and put up some of the ornaments. I'm not sure why "brilliance" immediately evokes darkness, as if one is only sharp in contrast to its absence, but it feels as if this season has been muted, as if, like so many other aspects of the year, it's happening beside me but without me. The brilliance is there, but it's not passing through me.

It's the time of year to plug in the lights.

Wait until the sun sinks, I assume to stay awake

On the other side of the world, tired 

but wide-eyed.

It's the brightest time, the darkest.

Evening hums like a startled nest of photons,

vibrating through my lenses

merry and wild.

It's a blind bend in the darkness.

Time slaloming through chill space, past chunks

where they'll slice it to seconds

and finer.

It's the winter tide, Christmas time.

Here, there's the cold wash of night perforated

by the houses, the bushes, deer,

limned bright.

--  Chrissa

In the Dead Malls of My Childhood

 

A flickering buzz reveals the tiled and plastered dead

In shadowed concourse, in banked elevators, in logo t-shirts.

I want to overshout the frequency--where is Gen X?

What was left in dusty bays, now empty?

Glittering ash, unswept glass; neon-burned by the 80's.

It's a decade for the quasar-born, the 80's,

Space-wide, just discovering the lonely, pulsing dead.

Even without it's neon makeup, it's empty,

A cotton rustle, an alien flash, glitter t-shirts

Remain silent in the abyss beneath our shoes--

This cave used to be Gen X.

It was ours, but what is a cohort? Gen X

Can't own a decade, sign for a mall, beam live from the 80's

We can't dance funky in each other's mother's shoes

Because this space groans, already dead

We got the drawerful of concert t-shirts

But when he presses the button, the speaker's empty.

Where the did this concourse drain itself empty?

Where did they go, the acid wash of Gen X?

Try to clean the rain from the glass with t-shirts

But it's a cold plaster storm of trash, blowing from the 80's:

Music like hailstones, electricity dead,

Chords keeping us stiff in our unlit shoes.

I see the labelscarred shelves nude of shoes

Every case, hanger, kiosk, body left empty.

We'll outfit the plaster as if the heroic dead

slung a guitar through the chorus in a Gen-X

movie, the kind where suburban hagiography, so 80's,

Says malls are choice, everything is cool as t-shirts.

Roll our flag in the cotton sleeves of three t-shirts

Worn barefoot, despite the plaster cast of shoes.

Mannequins and muses lived on screen in the 80's.

But all those movies' sleeves are empty.

We shot all the aliens--we're Gen X! 

But we didn't save them; the malls, too, are dead.

We're a holographic 80's band, our cassette, t-shirts,

summoning the dead with a kickflip, without shoes.

In an empty suburban lot, celluloid hisses "Gen X."

It's not great. It's not necessarily completely intelligible. But it's within the broad I'm-going-to-give-myself-a-break definition of sestina and therefore--yea!! Finally. A rough sestina. I think next year I might be exploring more poetic forms and maybe revisit this. What will it look like if I spend a year working on it? Well, pretty much exactly like a dead mall, probably -- hollow and disintegrating. Let's find out! :) 

-- Chrissa

The Body Politic

 

The body politic rarely appears

in its breathing myth body, rarely tramples anyone

wearing its own face.

But we are oversaturated, overheated

and it must fall out of solution and run triumphant

through us until, crushed,

we are small enough to fizz away,

to create the dyspeptic, bitter waters of relief 

it will then drink.

Deflated, it will belch, consider

us fondly, all the tiny crumbs of anger gone

to brilliant thunder.

And then, it will leave the car. 

The daily papers will absorb it, like an oil stain

in the shape of god.

 

I was in a bit of a mood this morning. There was an argument that revolved, in addition to other things, around control and who has the right to control what aspects of your life. Where does your morality end and another's begin? Is it okay to unfriend someone online with whom you'd still be happy to talk to IRL? It wasn't particularly heated and no answers were determined, as those discussions tend to remain unresolved. One of us discovered a pile of laundry that hadn't been put in the machine (that would be me) and the practicalities of having been waiting for a buzzer that was obviously NOT going to go off in the immediate future replaced endless wrangling about 2020. Soon, hanging that laundry up will replace drafting poetry...but poetry will gain the upper hand again this afternoon, when I attempt a sestina. I've never had luck with this form. I've never finished a poem in this form. I'm a little bit imagining this attempt as the creation of a spear aimed right at the black heart of a terrible year. I'm a little bit imagining this attempt as an excuse to avoid working on other things. 

I hope to post again tomorrow, spear in hand. 

-- Chrissa

Fallowmass

 

I need to

pull a thread, let the day unravel on this axis,

cut the cotton as if I was holding fate in silver blades

...or would they be iron? This time of year

either would be cold and both linger in the twilight.

You'll need a wick for the setting and the rising;

I feel the stars behind me, beneath me, above me--

there's no liturgy and the only prayers

here in the hallow of the year, in the hollow,

are old songs chanted on a driveway.

Sleep for a moment under that unraveled day

and old dreams will pick up the notes

and knit your heart back into sun.

The back door is open and our oldest dog is sleeping behind me and the house is chilly and dark and this year...this freaking year. I feel like it's staining my toes with the cold through my socks. I've been thinking that we need one of those one-off holidays, a national day of wrapping ourselves in blankets and sitting with the enormity of 2020.

It's the time of year, in between decorations and cheer, that reminds me that I don't know as much as I'd like at this time in my life and that if I did, I'd just be frustrated with trying to explain it to those around me. It's a good time for reading, so I'm sharing this with The Sunday Muse and  Poets and Storytellers United and heading out on a round of visiting the neighboring poets. 

-- Chrissa 

In a Fallow Season

 

We need the leaves to blanket us

We need our blankets to crumble into us

We need our roots to work the soil's stiffness

Hollow.

We need the wind to rake us 

We need our limbs to grow bare

We need the bareness to reveal, not barrenness,

But growth.

We need a fallow season

We need a deep sleep to plant dreams in 

We need our long dreams to coil the starlight's

Rough rope.

We need the rope for swings

We need to swing on thin limbs and leaves

We need to sieve the daylight for water, light,

And hope.

 

I was thinking, this morning, that we...that I...needed a day that wasn't a holiday celebration, but rather a holiday remembrance. That there should be a day, in between Thanksgiving and Christmas, to let the sorrows of the year live for a time and then be--in so far as possible--left to rest. I think that with all the coverage of the monolith in the desert, I have been thinking about the need for space that isn't already inscribed with meaning to catch the small and large losses and missteps and regrets of the year gone by. And that could just be 2020. It could just be the exhaustion of year of broken sleep and long stretches of isolation. This is a year of altars. 

-- Chrissa 

And Now, A Little December Interlude

 So, we've arrived at the  post-Thanksgiving doldrums. In addition to not knowing what day of the week it was (it's Wednesday, as my mom pointed out when I wished her a happy Monday this morning), the post-project crash I fail to anticipate every NaNo has come. This means it's time to think about next year and put some goals in place. 

First goal:  First Friday posting -- the first Friday of each month I'll create a post about what I've read, written, and edited the previous month. Hoping that this provides momentum to keep working on projects in a way NaNoWriMo encourages working on a draft. 

Second goal: Impromptu -- finishing this poetry compilation the associated essays. This will be limited to poems written during 2020 and the goal is to have between two and three short essays regarding how these came about.

Third goal: Ibis, Buzzard, Mockingbird, Dragon -- This is a short story fable that I want to finish revising during the month of December. I'm not sure what I'm going to do with it, but it'll be in some final form by 2021.

Fourth goal: Yeah, this is where I pretend that I'm going to finish that hot mess of a NaNo project at some point. Two books, four stories; variations on the theme of seasons of quarantine. 

And now, let's return to our regularly scheduled poetry program...

DECEMBER

Here the year goes to concrete clouds and leggings,

sweaters and the preparations for a turn, wobbling,

before it rolls away. I was born there,

in the shadow of that revolution or the falling arch

and it stills its spin just before Christmas, like a child

leaning against the plummet of a swing.

The year ends here in a wingless flight, toes pointed,

waiting on gravity, on time, on tomorrow. 

November Dailies

 

# 1 

Whole Worlds

Whole worlds pass through her hands

Some stain, some she drains, slowly,

Into paper jars she stuffs in  her desk.

#2

His Maker

Our galaxy is like a rainbow at night

I wear bandanas of all colors to say

Thank you for receiving them

On the other side of the water and the stars

My words soar away from us

Because the only bridge is flight

And breath the only support

When the sun comes up and the stars dissolve

I know that I'll be covered with inexplicable

Fur, my shirt like a starlit night

#3

Greenbean

Greenbean sings like the grumpiest angel:

The one who hit Heaven with the binder

of all the souls who carry minor infractions,

the ones who won't make honor guard wing

or the golden choir, and tripped hard

before beginning to inform each one.

But it's still Heaven, right?

So Greenbean sings.

#4

Midnight days sanded fine

Steel that sings with souls of pine

All the years the wood will tell

Melody's arc is that of time

#5

All the queen will say

is that her moves are legal

all animals are in her purview

and horses, too, are regal.

#6

I remember columns; I was placed

Near the sacred fire

And the memories lean away

My balance is wisdom

But folly lives and shies

from the flames.

#7

Her pattern was born on me.

My skin is a tapestry of her pink roses. 

What she remembers,

the horses on her bookshelves,

the soft pages and the blankets,

enameled barrettes and socks,

the square wash of sunlight;

all those dreams are fairy horses

still running.

#8

Among the paperwork was this calendar--

She had always been a traveler,

Braver than her holiday sweaters; 

She never called us stuck

But she left those flying women watching over

This small desk she'd brought from  home 

when her flight was called.

#9

My imagination is large enough

to carry me--the grasslands are wide,

and the winds slide down the mountains;

I'll walk them home

I'll fly my dreams above.

My yard is the earth itself

My imagination is large enough.

#10

The river drains, leaving the pews

beneath the arch of a forest in silence.

Have you imagined a boat?

Water comes from the heart pressed

firm against the chord.

Find a seat, put your throat to the oar.

Carry us onward, carry us over,

carry us through.
Sing.

#11

Careful, it is hot and the bowl delicate,

bone and sky and last years' field,

breathe across the surface, drink.

Peace, after the calling.

Tea, after the boiling.

#12

Tilt the world, not the  map, then lean--

It will leave the shape of itself 

For a mold for life or dreams.

What could the sticky years reveal

if you poured them in 

And a new world congealed?

#13

Pull the hooked weights from your grief

Spin the wool you gathered, dreaming

Weigh it down and drag the smoke

For the fish who grants the wishes

Swimming in the mist trees sigh

When they imagine dancing.  

#14

Today, I am grateful for the phone

and all the turkeys who called.

-- 

Gratitude in 19

Thank the world for the rain that woke the moonflowers, 

weaving a hope umbrella.

#15

No party -- no new dress, no shoes -- 

so thankful for that, and my mother's shirt,

and the shell my father had 

from GreatUncle Pete, the pirate.

Let the light fade in the kitchen window

Let the living room grow golden;

I will listen to the sea, and dance

and pour a cup of something warm

and raise a toast to the people 

who taught me to keep my sea legs

when I was adrift.

#16

I leave the backdoor open 

just for this: to invite the lizards

to explore the indoor plants;

to invite the butterflies

to the slosh of sugared tea; 

to turn from the page

to find a fawn, wondering

what happens next?

#17

I would give you a sword, said the waves,

if you were my daughter. 

But the sway of the moon drew them

far down the beach.

She had given her daughter herself

and she shone lemon-silver;

she will fight the darkness well

laughed the light over the tide.

#18

The pathway ends in tea time--

mad if you prefer, proper if you must--

always formal as the pinstriped woodland 

printed stark upon the sky.

And, with that, our November of daily prompts comes to an end. This month has encompassed NaNo, a bird fable (coming soon!), weekly poetry, and Thanksgiving. Although there was some sarcasm seasoning the thanks this year, as well as sorrow, there are several things to remember [uurrrgg, just swallowed a chunk of ice while thinking about gratitude--let's add that the ice chunk was small], including our wonderful WordCrafters writing group and our fearless (and tireless) leader Carrie, who provided these daily prompts and some of the weekly ones as well; my family doing well this year following a few minor surgeries during the pandemic; Arthur and Merlin, who are good writing & snuggle companions; my spouse the patient & creative cook who added scones & ice cream to his repertoire  this year; and, finally, finishing a draft that I was pretty sure I wouldn't start. Writing has carried me this far and I hope that as the work of pruning and shaping drafts continues, the gratitude & inspiration will still be fueling the effort. Along with caffeine. 

-- Chrissa

Float as You Breathe

 

Sing as you cross the dark. Float as you breathe.
This the beginning, testing speakers,
waiting out the thirsty and the distracted. 
Before the guide passes out 'space food.'
Before the guide begins the song.

Cheese from the mares that swim in the moon
Dry as the ice shaved into our monsoon.

Space, mother, planet, intelligent life, air--
we came from the bottom of the driest ocean
and lived on its lithic memory
until our disabsolution, until we drowned dry
to find the crest of the waves.

The word was given to me
before my breathing instructions,
before the glass was tested and polished,
before they cut down the first material
to museum standard and the fittings began.

The microphone shivers the dark;

they are explaining learning to swim.

When I couldn't, they said 

"We have a box for you.

You can be the first eyes looking up.

You can be the landing in the water,

the sinking to buoyancy,

the first bead from the capsule."

Sing as you cross the dark. Float as you breathe. 

Hope that everyone who celebrated this week had a good holiday and welcome to another response to The Sunday Muse's prompt. I was, this week, struck by the malaise of 2020.  I'm celebrating a minor NaNo victory and avoiding hanging holiday lights; listening to Merlin snore and thinking that sleep is a good thing, maybe, for other people. I should not write codas when I'm on the edgy side of tired. I should not think about coffee right now. But there are scones. Perhaps when my skills are such that I can extract the scones without waking the dogs, I will be at the level to contemplate midnight caffeine. 

You will never outsneak the ears, Mom. 

-- Chrissa 

Friday 55 -- Nov. 27, 2020

 

Gratitude is tenuous. The phone tries

pressing the day into connecting puzzle

pieces--washing dishes, cooking the turkey,

familiar arguments and ennui.

 

The cool front knocks out the power

without scattering the roses; 

we step into its damp porch-wake,

capsized into the chilly brightness.

And if it knocks again? 

Answer the back door, barefoot.

Peaceful and Sheepish

 

Horses chasing hogs in the suburbs?

Open a window, let the feeds scroll. Then,

bring me the holidays that I used to know!

Peace in the absence of understanding, 

in the overheated heart of preparation.

Pile china and glassware upon the table

emptied by those hoofbeats a street or a yard over.

Put the sheep in the middle of it, 

still living.

Let it stand for what we had and are,

for what we believe and how we act,

for mercy and for confusion.

For metaphors

and stuffed animals.

I will take a mug of cocoa to the front yard,

stand barefoot in the green grass

without anticipating their arrival.

And here we are again, another weekend in the tapioca timespace of 2020. This upcoming Thursday is Thanksgiving Day in the U.S. and  we're going to be staying home, making potato salad (yea!!) and probably plotting out our first Christmas light trek of the year. There's a nebulous end-of-year feeling creeping in under the doors along with the fog, but it burns out by the middle of the day and you can feel, in the lingering heat and the unnamable anxiety, the year refusing to turn. The picture captures that so well--is it a joke? A metaphor? The beginning of a horror story or a comedy? It refuses to tell you. It's not going to spoil the twist. 

Participating in the weekly poetry and whatnot of  The Sunday Muse and Poets and Storytellers United.

-- Chrissa

But Always Dragons

 

I was born to skate, he said,

Handing her a photo of a man leaping

Headfirst into a building.

My great-grandfather.

He just didn't have a board, yet.

He had this idea of a helmet,

A desire to fly,

Someone to catch him in the act.

A reckless two feet of flight.

I can take care of your girls--

The one who lies about her birthmark

And the one who lies about her sister.

She passed around the photo.

Told us as he spoke the dragon wheeled

Over the invisible nighttime park,

Just as reckless but without impact.

She agreed to take the skater.

She told us this in that salon.

Two weeks later it was closed...this plague...

I know I don't believe in draconic daughters.

But...when I wake up at 3 am

Her story slithers away from my dreams;

I imagine a reptile warmed by distress;

A man putting on a helmet, laughter

Alleviating the world for a second;

And a woman falling in love

With something else. 

I imagine giving the photo back.

Greetings and salutations and welcome. I may not be convinced about dragons, but I'm almost sure that I'm living in an alternate reality and my family has finally and conclusively moved to the reality we left behind sometime in March. It's slightly different...maybe damaged in the separation? But still functioning. Anyway...if it wasn't so late in the month, I have a feeling the sisters might have formed the basis of a NaNoWrimo skeleton...and the skater would have had his reckless moment. And I would have gotten my knock-off Gormenghast, now, sadly, a broken-down collection of cheap tourist shops connected by a kiddie ride in which a person slides down track in a plastic bin decorated to look like ghosts flying through the building. It's not rated for safety, slide at your own risk.

-- Chrissa

Sharing today with The Sunday Muse and Poets and Storytellers United.

Vigilance

 

We put the eternal flame to sea--a candle lit from a gas jet
sealed in a jar and tossed--Maria set it down, really--

into the scrim of water on the beach.

To sea with the idea of eternal vigilance.

To sea with the idea of loyalty to a campus.

As if, in the years to come, we'd look backwards

to the limestone walls, to the hidden patio on the roof,

to the eternal flame they'd just repaired

the summer before we arrived in the dorms,

to the basement room with all the mattresses,

to the first time we were faced with _______,

each of us keeping silent as we remember.

How long will a candle last on the shore? 

How long will friendship tether a girl?

So...yeah. Not sure where the above came from. My school years were pretty calm and they're long past, anyway. But there's something fragile about vigilance, an exhaustion already baked into the word. 

Surely we've all had enough of that, though. Sharing this week with The Sunday Muse and Poets and Storytellers United. 

-- Chrissa

Escape

 

Winter yarn, a golden scarf of moss, a song to spin
in sunlight cold as buried casks beneath leaves like fired clay;
festival time is come again.
 
Bring a chocolate bar for the goblins to gnaw—
a key, a toll, an iron gate left open—climb the hill, away,
leave silence to the throng.
 
A hare of hope, the boy in lace, the castellated clay
where the water crashes fierce beneath the elves’ unending ballad
and the moon’s stairway.
 
Festival time has come again as the tired fairy hill
Twists its spine of narrow stairs along its curving flank, waiting…
starved of hunter’s thrills.

Greetings and salutations. It's the first day of NaNo and my brain is in, well, denial. Also, to be honest, this week's upcoming (US) election is reinforcing that weird quarantine feeling of a constant, slow-motion, car crash. Therefore: fantasy. A brief end-of-year escape.

Sharing this week with The Sunday Muse and Poets and Storytellers United.

-- Chrissa

Then The Planchette

 We come to the narrow entrance--

no wider 

than a driveway--

where the signs perch.

We turn.

A narrow lane,

signs continuing

against 

a bright curve of landscaping.

A flag snaps blue, red, white,

deep in the grass.

Then the wooden house.

The masking.

The silence.

Our tented privacy.

Then, the planchette.

The ritual summoning.

If the question is what is haunting you this week, the answer is the idea that we choose to summon violence. Also, pickup flags in the absence of official parades annoy me.

-- Chrissa

Church of the Shark

 

Today's WordCrafter prompt is futuristic, with the suggestion of a poem/story/etc. taking place in the year 2051. Carrie has picked out a cool image--I love the domes, the suggestion of traffic, the warm tones, the potential trees in the near distance. It makes me think of college, of museums, of the way the world used to look when the future might be shinier than right now. It's the promise that we'll clean it up as we go, like kids picking up their rooms before leaving for vacation or before going to sleep. While these towers and moons calm me, the poem that speeds through is not...exactly...the promise of a fantastic future in a place where red and orange are the colors of a healthy environment. Just out of curiosity--would that be nerve-wracking for someone who grew up on a relatively blue planet? Instead, here is

Church of the Shark

Coming out of the blue was accidental.

Land is a lagniappe to sentience, an excuse

to form the ocean in the utter deep.

We have contravened the cetacean, 

the oceanic, the order of the thermocline,

the dissolve of the light.

We give up the same verse since 2045,

when the Sharks came for art;

came for our dry imaginations.

They stayed to teach us the prayer for forgiveness.

We have withered dry; we breathe greedily--

forgive us, our ocean. Come back to us.

And they have.

The sharks say it is just. 

Land is a perilous privilege. We take a breath,

blow the prayers upward.

They rise like an unstable memory

of glass and height all the way

to the edge of the sky.

-- Chrissa