Under The Knife (Fri.Flash 55)

Would they have us melt some Tupperware
and spread it on our bread?
One molecule from plastic
should be their claim instead.
Round-up in the waves of grain
they took her breast by knife.
The deer steer clear of GMOs,
amphibians the coast.
Let’s all melt some Tupperware
and spread it on our toast.



If you like butter on your toast, let the G-Man know!

Sorry, G., I’ve veered out of the fictional world this week into reality’s nightmare.With the latest news I got all creepy. The brown food coloring in cola has now been determined to be a carcinogenic. Pepsi rebuked the findings, saying even if true, most of their customers only drink 1/3 of a can a day so amounts should be considered safe. Does anyone know anyone who opens a can of pop and only drinks one third? And why is margarine in the dairy aisle? It isn’t even food. And it certainly isn't yellow. Margarine was “invented” and it is grayish white, the way you’ll find it in Europe (if you find it at all), where they aren’t allowed to dye it.

Boomerang (Friday Flash 55)

Even as a child, she was drawn to the night
when the air was soft and fraught with life.
He, too, a child of twilight—
mysterious boy boomerang in his belt.
Was my father’s, he said,
dog circling, divining the night air.
Fingers entwined, he taught her to throw
so it would always come back.



If it's Friday, or Friday Eve, it's time for Flash, Flash 55.  This weekly event is hosted by the G-Man who loves fiction with a plot and 55 words.

In Pursuit Of A Sparrow

This week at Poets and Writers, there's a poetry prompt to write a poem about a time the weather has affected your life. "Weather has a spiritual aspect and a profound affect on us even though it doesn't know we exist."

In the midst of this deep freeze, something called me from bed at five in the morning. Minus thirteen degrees outside, and the furance runs without pause. Why am I not still bundled in bed with a pillow over my head? Because of the poem that won't leave me alone?


It's the snow, it's the snow, deep and blowing and more
and the road is not there nor the drive nor the fields
nor silo with its rounded white globe.
Not there.
The birds have all fled to the wood and the cows
bury their noses in sweet fragrant hay.
The bull dreams of grass and the sun on his back
and the chickens fluff their feathers, heat lamps under their wings.

It came quietly in the night, like pirates boarding a ship,
blanketed the Queen Anne's Lace gone to seed in a ditch

then bestowed billows of white on the evergreen boughs
and laid down ruffles of lace up to their waist.
Silent silent.
The car lies like a behemoth under a quilt
and the bird feeders are frozen and covered with snow.
So still, so still.

But then the wind stirred on a rotational pull
and with hackles raised, set off in pursuit.
It rallied the snow, which must be put in its place,
must be molded and banked and taught to behave
and now white is the sky and the roof of the barn
and the house and the field where wheat once grew tall.

A little brown sparrow lands on my sill,
she lands in a candle nestled in snow.
Soft and brown at my window, right there at my window,
this little winged creature quivers and shakes,
under stalks of arugula gone to seed in a vase.  

Eyes dart to and fro, tis a mean trickery,
these stems bereft of seeds but decked out prettily
(to us)
in white Christmas lights.
What’s its use asks the sparrow,
so fragile yet hardy of wing and sinew
It has no seed or shelter, it’s nothing to me.

So wise, the sparrow, poised to leave. To leave.
But wait.
The Christmas tree hauled outside on the porch—
denuded of finery yet beautiful still—
has blown off in the gale, but its branches are thick
and welcoming still as on that night in the lot
when we chose it over others. All others.
Welcoming.

She flies into the winter of my spent Christmas tree,
disappears from sight but I know she's in there.
Then joined by a junco who was lost in the wind
a chubby little junco, charcoal blue and lost gray.
then, look! a fat dove skitters onto the porch,
wings flutter and clap and he joins them in there. 
All so hardy and knowing and independent of me.


Thank you for reading my long weather poem. I couldn't seem to stop.  But one more thing before I go, from Book Riot, this past week comes a list of ten wonderful Kurt Vonnegut quotes. If you've stayed with me thus far, I would leave you with my favorite.

"The America I loved still exists, if not in the White House or the Supreme Court or the Senate or the House of Representatives or the media. The America I love still exists at the front desks of our public libraries."

Amen

Drinking a Dead Man's Beer (fridayflash55)

   

Someone poured a stein for the deceased
and set it on the mantle.
It had warmed but wasn’t flat.

The sun danced off the lake
which should have been ice-covered
but was as bare as the hands
wrapped in a rosary.

Let them wonder that you walked
amongst their grieving
and finished your final beer unfettered.



If you ever drank a dead man's beer, let the G-Man know. Write a flash piece of fiction in exactly 55 words and let the most gracious host know. Cut it up right. And have a Happy New Year!

All The Way To The Top

When the ice storm hit on the night of the winter solstice and the power went out, we rediscovered things we enjoy but seldom have time for, and it’s remarkable how much time is freed up when there are no electronic devices to captivate your senses.

We paid close attention to daylight hours and the sun’s position in the sky; we minded time by the path of its progression. At nightfall, we lit candles and hauled an old kerosene heater out of the attic and kept track of the matches. We played cards and dominoes by candlelight. With the television off and internet down, the piano regained its rightful place at center stage, and rusty fingers turned nimble over the course of the outage.

When the skies cleared and the sun came out, the kids took to the outdoors with boots and camera. They climbed the slide on the dock at the pond,

all the way to the top.

And saw the tracks leading across the ice.

But I, wrapped in sweaters and scarves, read the first few chapters of hard copy, changed a few good words for better words and found errors that I missed on the screen. I call it monitor blindness. 

I considered a story of mayhem and murder in a two-hundred-year old barn. You can research a novel in a spooky barn, but do it before the sun goes down. 

Just saying…it’s not all bad when the power goes off. And when it comes back on, you have another experience to write about.

The Ghost of Red Rover (Friday Flash 55)

The girl's locked in the outhouse,
a boy climbs a tree.

Hiding in the brambles,
two maybe three.

Merry-go-round twirls,
ribbons in her hair,

teeter-totter trembles
with a weight that isn't there.

A wistful wind whistles
through the lilac hiding place,

telling of those who huddled there
when they were young and scared.



This is a Friday Flash 55 for the G-Man. If you write a flash piece on Friday, let him know. This is written in rememberance of playgrounds with steel slides and wooden teeter-totters. Playgrounds that were a refuge and a curse, playgrounds that instilled bravery when we were young and scared.

Self-Service (Fri. flash 55)

The man's stump
hangs at his side like a tuber.
He pushes his cart
and stands in line.
The stump is hairy, like an old man's ear.
 
I watch my mother
struggle from walker to bed,
the laborious lifting of a leg,
the settling in.
The collective exhale
when she opens her eyes
and smiles.


Written belatedly for the host of Friday Flash 55. Here's to hearth and home and lingering at the table. Have a good weekend.

Elmore Leonard on the Mortal Sin of Dialogue Tags

Elmore Leonard needs no introduction but his rules of writing bear repeat. I particularly like Rules 3 and 4 and need to be constantly reminded of 3 and 4. So I'm herein reminding myself at the same time I'm reminding you.
 

 

Elmore Leonard’s rules of writing.
 

Rule 3. Never use a verb other than“said” to carry dialogue. The line of dialogue belongs to the character; the verb is the writer sticking his nose in. But said is far less intrusive than grumbled, gasped, cautioned, lied.
 

Rule 4. Never use an adverb to modify the verb “said” . . .he admonished gravely. To use an adverb this way (or almost any way) is a mortal sin. The writer is now exposing himself in earnest, using a word that distracts and can interrupt the rhythm of the exchange.
 

It’s better to convey your characters emotion through their actions, odd habits (ie. biting bottom lip, etc.) and that the word 'said' disappears to readers
 

Despite the overwhelming temptation to do otherwise, use the word, “said,” a lot. The classic dialogue tags,“He grimaced,” or “He chuckled,” or “He snickered” draws attention to the tag line and away from the purpose of the dialogue. Use them sparingly.

If you feel the snickering or chuckling is necessary to move your story forward, fine. Just put it in a sentence of its own.

“No, you don’t,” he chuckled.

vs.

“No, you don’t.” He chuckled at the notion.

Turn your inappropriate tags into enhancing sentences to improve your writing.

Finally: Don't let your characters sound the same.


I know I shouldn't stick my nose in a character's line of dialogue, but like any mere mortal writer, I often buckle to the temptation. How about you? Are you guilty? 

 

Make A Green Gesture

When we think of carbon emissions, we think of coal plants and motor vehicles, but the truth is, computer and internet usage are emissions culprits as well. I participated in the original German Carbon Neutral Blog Campaign several years ago. It was so successful, they are now doing an American launch. The Green Gestures campaign is a large-scale reforestation initiative here in the U.S., by bloggers, for bloggers, in collaboration with the Arbor Day Foundation. Participation is easy and free, and a native tree will be planted for your blog in an American forest to double the positive impact your efforts will have on the environment.

On the Make A Green Gestures site (the sister campaign to Make It Green) there are links to easy steps we can all take to help out, like ways to opt out of junk mail (phone books) and all that paper, and ideas for avoiding petroleum based products.

If you want to participate, all you have to do is write a short post about the campaign and link to the Green Gestures site. Email them with the url of your post and they will plant a tree for your blog.

 

 

Because we can never have too many trees. Thanks for reading and participating. Have a Green day!!

Death Of A Writer (friday flash 55)

The writer's cabin
built atop a dune
was supposed to inspire
the writer.
Now it is empty of the writer.
Only clutter
that doesn’t belong
to a writer
remains.
The wind reshapes the dune.
The dune grass bows to the wind.
Its roots hold the dune in place
but the writer was not to stay.


If it's Friday, it's Flash 55, (a short in exactly 55 words). If you want to read more, or if you've written one yourself, go here.
Don't worry, be happy. It's Friday.

TGIF

The Scarecrow Has No Face

Three whitetails paw the earth,
ignore scarecrow.
Heads lift to danger, nostrils flare.
Breath plumes in the morning air.
Crow feeds in the middle of the road,
red hawk circles the coop and dives for a kill.
Two whitetails dash over the misty field,
like schooners escaping under full sail.
The scarecrow has no face.


This is a Friday Flash 55, the weekly writing exercise sponsored by the G-Man, aka Mr. Knowitall. If you have a story to tell in 55 words, let the Maestro-of-Flash know.

Happy Halloween

Waxing The Floor and Counting Matches

Writers are notorious for using any reason to keep from writing: over-researching, retyping, going to meetings, waxing the floors-anything. -Gloria Steinem

If you’re feeling stymied as a writer, don't wax the floor. Pick up your pen and describe what you see. Eavesdrop and write it down. Straight up. Feed the fire, shelter the flame, and count your matches. Don’t let yourself run out of words. Store unusual words up your sleeve, like fanciful and ornery. I like ornery. I like my ornery protagonist and his ornery adversary. I'll like them to the end. 

With hunting season upon us, gunshot and scattered quail, I unlocked my keyboard and reconnected with my troubling characters. I’m fleshing out their peculiarities and trying to suspend disbelief, which brings me to a notion I’ve stored up my sleeve. Schooling is good, but I believe there are three things a writer needs which can’t be taught: empathy, unbridled imagination, and the ability to suspend disbelief. If you have that, you can learn the rest. You can entice a reader to stick with you to The End. As Mickey Spillane once said, “No one ever read a novel to get to the middle.” And we’ve all heard said: there’s no such thing as writer’s block. There are only writers who run out of matches. There’s no such thing as a failed writer, only writers who quit before they get to the end.

I'm off to the north country to stand on the shore of Lake Superior. No waxing floors. I'm going to eavesdrop in pubs and study facial expressions.  I mean I'm going to walk the shore and study tide lines, search the horizon for freighters and collect driftwood.  I have my journal, pencil, and ID, should I lose myself.  I'm not afraid of getting lost. How silly. I'm not afraid of that.

What's Your Typing Speed?

How are your typing skills?  I found this link to a speed test thanks to Lydia Kang at The Word Is My Oyster, and decided to test myself. I used to be pretty fast in college (80-100wpm depending on how much dorm craziness went on the night before). I clocked in at 70wpm, with no mistakes, so I guess I still have it. When you think about it, the keyboard is rather marvelous, one of the few technological advances that have not changed since its invention.

If you want to clock your speed, here's the link. It's easy and fun and I figure good practice.

http://www.typeonline.co.uk/typingspeed.php

My writing didn't take off until we bought our first computer and I discovered Word. I LOVED it. My words could finally keep pace with the thoughts in my head. That's the kind of writer I am. What about you? Do you, can you, write stories in long-hand, the old-fashioned way?

RUBY (Friday Flash 55)

My hair falls out in front of my eyes
but the sun breaks through the frosted glass
of the shower and hot water sluices
off my shoulders and breasts.
I twirl strands into tufts on the tile,
like locks in a baby book.
Baby’s first haircut.
It doesn't even hurt, and I towel myself dry.

 
A Friday Flash 55. Fifty-Five words for the G-Man

TGIF

After The Knifing

he avoided her father.  
But when the wound started to heal,
he knew he’d be left with a scar.
He’d never been cut,
and he wondered why
his uncle, a veteran of undeclared war,
hadn’t warned him about the aftermath of that.
The crushing humiliation of having one’s mortality
laid open for all to see.


It's Friday. It's the mean season (the writing season), and time for a Flash 55. If you have written a short story in a sparse 55 words, post it and let the world know. Or at least let the G-Man know.

Hello fifty-fivers!! TGIF!

After I posted this, I realized I was a day late, lost in time . . . but not a word shy. So, TGIS!

The Teacher

It's time for what seems to have become my once-a-month post. If I want time to write these days, I must get up at 4 o'clock in the morning. The children here in Michigan are all back in school and it seems appropriate to finally post this poem that has been in my drafts folder since last winter. I think most everyone has a teacher in the family, or as a friend. This is for them, the real heroes of today.


The kindergarteners have to pee all the time and want their mothers.
She plays her piano for them and buys crayons and gold stars with her own money.

The first graders have learned to lie
and she takes away their stars.

The second graders build alliances and rat on each other.
She buys maps of the world and teaches outside the test.

The third graders are clothes whores.
She works up their lesson plans to the sweep of the janitor.

The fourth graders invent new allergies and disorders
and she pleads for more recess time to make them fit and strong.

The fifth graders forge their parent’s signatures
and she steels herself for the conference.

The middle school students pierce their bodies and experiment.
She pleads for music in the classroom and a place for art.
But they took away her piano and told her to teach to the test.

Garden Thunder

Thunder rumbles in the distance and circles around, seeming to come from all directions. Thunder helps the corn grow, or is that lightning? I believe that is true, what the old folks say. The interaction between the atmosphere and the soil is an important connection, the feeding of the sod under our feet, the fungi and organisms that nourish the grass that nourishes the animals that trod the earth and enrich our lives.

The corn grows at night, you can hear it if you sit by a field when the wind is still. The tomatoes are trellised and we had our first BLT last night. The cucumbers sprawl across the ground and tangle with the summer squash: the patty pans and crooknecks. The pie pumpkins are rambling into the sweet corn which is growing as I write, now that it's warmer and now that it's raining. No, it's pouring. God bless this piece of Earth, this good ground and clean soil.

One of our CSA members has a food blog ,which I just discovered, and she's been posting pictures of our boxes along with recipes. This is one of them from about 5 weeks ago when the French Breakfast radishes were at their peak and the lavender was perfect.

I thought you might like to know what I've been doing this summer. You can check out Nicole Dula's blog here, with more pictures of our vegetables and some ridiculously delicious recipes.

So, what's your weather been like this summer? Obscenely hot? Desert dry? Flooding with unusual amounts of rainfall like they've had in Calgary and the Dakotas? The jet stream is jacked out of shape, or so I've heard the expert experters say. Here in the Great Lakes basin we are bordering on boring normal. And that's good.

Today is my dad's 93rd birthday! I'm going to make him a jam cake, an old recipe from my grandmother who was a cake hound. She always made our birthday cakes when we were growing up. She would buy the big colored marshmallows and cut them into the shape of flower petals and decorate our cakes with them. I miss her.

Have a fruitful August. Believe me when I say I've missed writing for my blog and reading yours and posting what I hope are welcome, helpful comments. Summer is so busy, so full, bulging at the seams like the garden, sprawling into the driveway and crowding the flowerbeds. Summer.

The Blackbird and the Strawberry

Observe the girl eating a strawberry. Observe the cattle observing her. They line the electric fence bordering the patch and watch with unblinking eyes. Some become bored with her repetition and chomp on grass, others chew their cuds as the calves scamper to and fro. They follow her progress along the 300-foot row and jostle each other for a view. Their fence runs out. Her row continues. She leaves them behind. 

Her fingers seek the silver dollar-sized berries hidden under the leaves in the center of the plant, heavy with ripeness and replete with moisture, nestled out of sight of the most keen-sighted blackbird. She holds them by the stem and drops them in the box.

The strawberry plant is the perfect camouflage, the perfect fruit. It needs no fungicides or chemicals. It needs no genetic tinkering. She regrets her father's position.

The odor from the animals wafts on the whip of their tails, earthy and fungal, not unpleasant, but memory-laden. The cattle, the grass, fresh cut hay in the air and holding hands in the night. A memory.

The Cocoon

I've been gone so long I can scarce find my way back. I've missed coming around and reading your blogs and participating in Friday Flash Fiction and Magpie Sunday Tales. In case my blog should disappear from lack of interest, I click on it ocassionally to look at the water. But all too quickly, I'm called away to my lettuces and radishes, radicchio and kale, picking asparagus and tending finicky peppers that need this and that and tomatoes that must soon be staked. And then there are the weeds.

I fall into bed at night, earlier and earlier, like the most boring person on earth. In the wee hours of morning I look at my manuscript, portions stacked here and there (cause I'm a hands-on-paper kind of writer), and wonder how long I can persevere in my search for the perfect agent who will love its strengths more than they dislike its problems.

Spring and summer are always like this, no time to write, guilt-ridden at nightfall, but too tired to do anything about it. Achy legs find surcease between the sheets and achy heart burrows into the soft cocoon of blankets and dreams of water, an orderly garden, and a writing life.

But wait....have you ever had Canada geese fly overhead so low you could hear the whoosh whoosh of their wings? I was standing on my front porch admiring the idyllic scene of cattle on grass, when I heard the familiar honking of a resident pair. They flew in just over the power lines with their necks outstretched. I was surprised at the intensity of sound, much like the flapping of a dozen sheets on a clothesline. Geese fly slow and methodical, and the air displaced by their wing span left a tremor in the air. I watched as they disappeared over the tree line, wondering at their destination, wondering what they see from up there.

What They Show For "Show And Tell".

Please see Frances Garrood's post sharing a letter from Texas death row. I don't care what someone has done, nobody deserves to be treated like this.

Pictures only scratch the surface. The sad truth is in the letter.

Where is the outcry? The shame? The sanctimonious are content as our prisons become storage units for the mentally ill and the addicted and the veteran.

We have our own gulag. Lets own up to it. This is how we treat the least of our citizens. We reap what we sow and the granary is full. Prison construction is robust while schools are dilapidated and underfunded.

Yeah, I'm a bleeding heart.