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A fresh week means fresh ideas. Here are the prompts to get your juices flowing.
From Robert Lee Brewer at Poetic Asides:
For today's poem, I want you to write a poem about something missing. It can be about an actual physical object or something you just can't put your finger on (like "love" or "the spirit of Christmas" or something).
Andy did such a great job picking yesterday, I gave him another crack at it. From The Writer’s Book of Matches (Writer’s Digest Books):
Seven people board a small boat for a tour around the islands; but when the boat returns to the dock, only six people remain on board.
You know the drill. Six sentences on the prompt of your choice. Share if you want. I’ll post mine later.
Bearing Witness--The Wall
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Today they started building The Wall. When I woke this morning and went
down to the kitchen, Mum and Dad weren’t there. I followed the low murmur
of the ...
7 years ago
10 comments:
This may or may not hit the target on the poet's prompt; however, it's what came to mind, so I ran with it. You be the judge.
Missing...
Carter looked up from his discovery, the result of a broken-down tractor and a long walk through the forest as the shortest distance between today’s work and the farm house. He glanced around thinking: Here’s a nest full of unusual critters, but no mother or father. And they were unusual, their shape and color unlike anything he’d ever seen in his collection of National Geographics or on the PBS shows he occasionally watched.
Slowly, one of the babies lifted its head and blinked at him; so, Carter kneeled down, reached out a friendly hand, and said, “Hey, there little fella.” The young creature sniffed at first, and then it snapped, its razor-sharp incisors shearing off the first knuckle of his right pinkie.
A cracked twig cut off Carter’s wailings, and he whirled around to find the form of a giant, lizard-like animal crouched and ready to strike, its long tongue licking at more teeth than he’d ever seen in his life.
I think you're on to something, Stephen. I wanted more. Are you going to continue?
I'm cheating wildly here and I'm not going to apologize. This is 10 sentences, but I don't want to jam it into six and ruin the cadence.
Long Gone
He’d been gone so long. Still Ginny sometimes forgot and she’d get that electric jolt, the one that came with “I have to tell Jonathon.”
But then she’d remember and the jolt would dissolve. The sorrow was a shadow that trailed or preceded her.
Most painful was the evidence, the pants hanging behind the bathroom door, the half-eaten sandwich, the book lying exactly as he left it. She never touched them, except to clean, and sometimes, in weak moments to bury a nose in.
She remembered the time he’d caught her, the disgusted look on his face as she stroked his dirty sock against her cheek. He’d left that night and been gone almost a week.
Her shadow had covered her that week, wrapping her in its sticky filaments. She’d cried and read the book he left three times over.
Wow!
I am truly plugged into this one. The character has such a strong pull on the reader that it's hard to resist. Nice job.
Crazy rule breakers...
Here's mine:
Ship of Fools
When we left, the seven of us on a bright cheerful morning without a cloud in the sky, none of us had any idea that our three hour journey would turn into a years-long struggled for survival. Where the crappy weather came from, not even our crusty skipper could tell us, but when it hit us it hit us hard; our ship was tossed about and we would have surely drowned if not for the valor of the mate and the skipper. Something happened in that storm, something odd that not even the brilliant professor who was along for the journey could explain fully: was it an electrical storm that opened a space time continuum? In any case, our time on the island where we were stranded lasted three years but when we’d finally made repairs and got the boat in the water again we were able to find port easily enough and only three hours had passed. The absence of our most famous member, the starlet, was chalked up to misfortune—the official story was that she went overboard in the storm—but I’m here to set the record straight and let you know what really happened. Truth it, those first lean months on the island were tough and as the skipper noted “Man cannot live off of coconuts alone.”
Clearly, John, you are a Marianne fan :)
Seriously, cute take. I KNEW you'd bite on the Gilligan's Island thing. I was kinda tempted myself.
Ah, I'm getting predictable...boo hiss.
:-)
Oh, these are so interesting and compelling and all I have here at 11:34p.m. is this depressing drivel. Blech. Maybe if I'd written 20 sentences...:-)
Oh well. Greta, it's another dog theme!
Leaving Town
Fredericksburg crouched, a small brown dog, head on its paws. The storefronts closed their cloudy eyes and the sweaters on display smelled like the boxes in the basement where they’d sat too long, unopened. Leaves lay matted in the gutters. Farmers scratched their chins and sat talking in the diner, thick coffee cups half empty, about the Shopko closing and Nels Olson passing away after he’d lost the farm to the interstate. The State had taken everything, except his collie. Someone’d have to find her a home now.
I really liked this, Jane. The dog metaphor was well-handled throughout. Flesh it out. I'd like to see what you get.
You are a kind human being, Greta; you probably escort your spiders outside rather than squash them.
:)
I'll see what I can do.
Now, for today's....
jb
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