Writing
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Mother Fails to Watch Rob at School Fair
Rob raises a fist to Mother: a small plastic baggie,
twist-tied, sloshing with water and a goldfish.
Mother buys a tank, coordinated gravel, fish food,
seven decorative plants. The next day,
Goldie gapes, rolls its eyes and fins belly-up,
sinks with a scale-loosening thump on the gravel.
Categories: Poetry, Uncategorized Poems
Mind Missed the Bus
Mind was always awkward,
never certain how to please.
He’s certain now he’s late
for dinner, evening chores.
Categories: Poetry, Uncategorized Poems
Mind’s Eye is Glass
Mind’s left eye is glass, colored
like the cat’s eye he shoots
across the blacktop every afternoon
while bags against the fence
dwindle down to one.
Categories: Poetry, Uncategorized Poems
We Need a Dead Woman to Begin
If someone visits every week with flowers
to lean against stone, there’s no evidence
within the grounds: only this splash of bright red
against rust and steel.
Categories: Poetry, Uncategorized Poems
Your Neighbors Lost Their Alarm Clocks
You watch them scramble into cars,
balance piles of papers on top of briefcases,
tug at ties or shoes too loose to stay
in place.
Categories: Poetry, Uncategorized Poems
The magic will kill you every time
[The Tower’s marble floors and gilded ceilings] reek of “I have so much money that I have nothing better to do with it than melt it down and spread it across my ceiling so that, as you go to sleep, you can contemplate just how much more money I have than you do. And, while I know you are contemplating ways to capture my lovely gilded home and fabulous wealth, I’d like to also draw your attention to the very large and open windows in this room. Isn’t the Magic Man-Eating Forest lovely this time of year?”
Categories: Prose, NaNoWriMo 2006
Introduction to Bombs, 101
Or Lochim and Laiven might be busy sabotaging a mill, as you do on a Sunday afternoon when no other diversion presents itself. “Quick, drop some bags of flour from the loft!” he’d cry. “It’ll create an explosive dust that we can use to blow this building right out of the water!”
“How do you know?” Laiven would ask.
“Because it’s one of the stock how-to-create-an-explosion-without-explosives plot tropes in fantasy novels,” Lochim would reply. “And, also, because I worked in a mill one summer and the miller told me about his uncle’s friend’s neighbor’s sister, who had a cousin who once died tragically in a flour-dust explosion.”
Categories: Prose, NaNoWriMo 2006
The B-52 Clause
“You know you tried to drown me once?” I offered over a beer.
“I did?” he asked, surprised–perhaps because I had actually bought a round of drinks.
“In Texas. You held me underwater right by the lifeguard’s chair, so the lifeguard wouldn’t see.”
“I don’t remember that,” he said. “I just remember that you could swim the whole length of the pool and back underwater. No one else could. Remember that?”
“Sure,” I said, and paused. “I taught myself to do that after you tried to drown me. I wanted better lung capacity in case you tried it again.”
“Oh.” He looked guilty. “But something good came out of it, right? Everyone thought you were so cool for swimming underwater like that.”
Categories: Prose, NaNoWriMo 2006
Details are Dangerous
Oh, all right. I’ll admit one small detail about That Guy. He may be the descendent of the dead gyppa king. He happens to carry an heirloom that was lost at the same time as the last heir. Laiven, with all the knowledge of the elves behind her, thinks he is, in fact, the king’s descendent. Lochim, with all the knowledge of the gyppa behind him, is certain the king’s son died in the aftermath of the invasion.
The plot of the novel, quite obviously, is a Quest To See Who’s Right.
That Guy is never asked how he feels about all this. That Guy happens to be insanely loyal to the descendent of the invading king; he’d be horrified at the thought that he could be a claimant to the throne. He’d probably attempt to assassinate himself. Since he is That Guy, he’d assassinate the wrong guy.
Categories: Prose, NaNoWriMo 2006
I am not from your country
There’s also the issue of poetry in fantasy novels. Or, rather, the lack of poetry in fantasy novels. Good poetry is hard to write. Bad poetry is very easy to write. The problem is that many people write Very Bad Poetry Indeed, and because it was hard for them to write, they assume it must be Good Poetry.
This assumption is wrong, but you can’t tell poets (even self-proclaimed poets) that their poetry is bad. They’ll say you don’t understand them.
Being misunderstood is one of the burdens of being a poet, you see.
Categories: Prose, NaNoWriMo 2006