
The Post*The Post by *antonfrost
The blue mail-satchel bumps and sways, brings them in,
rigid with the weight of promise;
envelopes, dessert-colored, a delicacy,
the brittle folds filled with scent,
a creme transfer over time, to me.
I open each with the reverence
of seashells and oceanic loves.
I cut apart the shore that separates us
with a letter-opener, the sound of water.
You have arrived
before your body.
I settle into my pulse
and the resounding ambiance of my privacy
while your words touch my lips.
*
I.
We stand in our reamed maze of consent--
faces, throats thrumming
on parallel shoulders;
a doorway, at dusk;
a barefoot dance sung over by bird
| "To carry something was to 'hump' it, as when Lieutenant Jimmy Cross humped his love for Martha up the hills and through the swamps. In its intransitive form, 'to hump' meant 'to walk,' or 'to march,' but it implied burdens far beyond the intransitive. "Almost everyone humped photographs. In his wallet, Lieutenant Cross carried two photographs of Martha. The first was a Kodachrome snapshot signed 'Love,' though he knew better. She stood against a brick wall. Her eyes were gray and neutral, her lips slightly open as she stared straight-on at the camera. At night, sometimes, Lieutenant Cross wondered who had taken the picture, because he knew she had boyfriends, because he loved her so much, and because he could see the shadow of the picture taker spreading out against the brick wall. The second photograph had been clipped from the 1968 Mount Sebastian yearbook. It was an action shot---women's volleyball--- and Martha was bent horizontal to the floor, reaching, the palms of her hands in sharp focus, the tongue taut, the expression frank and competitive. There was no visible sweat. She wore white gym shorts. Her legs, he thought, were almost certainly the legs of a virgin, dry and without hair, the left knee cocked and carrying her entire weight, which was just over one hundred pounds. Lieutenant Cross remembered touching that left knee. A dark theater, he remembered, and the movie was Bonnie and Clyde, and Martha wore a tweed skirt, and during the final scene, when he touched her knee, she turned and looked at him in a sad, sober way that made him pull his hand back, but he would always remember the feel of the tweed skirt and the knee beneath it and and the sound of the gunfire that killed Bonnie and Clyde, how embarrassing it was, how slow and oppressive. He remembered kissing her good night at the dorm door. Right then, he thought, he should've done something brave. He should've carried her up the stairs to her room and tied her to the bed and touched that left knee all night long. He should've risked it. Whenever he looked at the photographs, he thought of new things he should've done." --- from "The Things They Carried," Tim O'Brien. Norton Anthology of Contemporary Fiction, second ed., 1998; pp. 429--430. ----- ----- ----- I believe in you my soul, the other I am must not abase itself to you, And you must not be abased to the other. Loafe with me on the grass, loose the stop from your throat, Not words, not music or rhyme I want, not custom or lecture, not even the best, Only the lull I like, the hum of your valved voice. I mind how once we lay such a transparent summer morning, How you settled your head athwart my hips and gently turn'd over upon me, And parted the shirt from my bosom-bone, and plunged your tongue to my bare-stript heart, And reach'd till you felt my beard, and reach'd till you held my feet. Swiftly arose and spread around me the peace and knowledge that pass all the argument of the earth, And I know that the hand of God is the promise of my own, And I know that the spirit of God is the brother of my own, And that all the men ever born are also my brothers, and the women my sisters and lovers, And that a kelson of the creation is love, And limitless are leaves stiff or drooping in the fields, And brown ants in the little wells beneath them, And mossy scabs of the worm fence, heap'd stones, elder, mullein and poke-weed. ---From Leaves of Grass, Book III "Song of Myself," 5. Walt Whitman, 1900. [link] --- --- --- (`Spiff-Johnson and `GaioumonBatou started this. Check out their pages for more awesome literary features.) |
| <PoetRangers> I'm about as sexy as an astronaut suit filled with pudding and pink peeps for eyes. --- <AGMeade>yeah, who doesn't love the thought of some delicious poo. --- <AGMeade>YOU may feel like you're being punished. <AGMeade>I'm quite enjoying myself. --- <lost-angle>I've also realized a new way of encouraging myself to actually get shit done <jamberry-song>Oh? <jamberry-song>Do share <Botkin>prunes? --- <Tense>It's not perfectionism when the story is actually bad! <jamberry-song>hundreds of people thought it was good! <Vocable>Who cares what other people think, they don't do it often! <Vocable>*has been waiting for a chance to say that line* <Tense>And I'm sure they cry themselves to sleep every night because it's not up anymore <jamberry-song>I'm crying right now <Tense>Hahahaha <Vocable>That's not nice to people with erectile dysfunction, Tense. --- ** GigaNigga was kicked by neurotype * I DON'T LIKE IMAGINARY FRIENDS ** GigaNigga has joined <neurotype> fuck autojoin --- <hermosossuenos>isn't cathartic a drug? --- |

; with a few updates of course -- I've got better shoes and made a hat for myself [sorry Saint-Just! I did steal a hat from my stock. However, they are paying me for teaching the class, so I have pledged half of my pay to Saint-Just's house fund].)

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| Affirmations 1.) The important thing is that you are writing. 2.) Discipline and determination are two of a writer's greatest virtues. ----- ----- ----- Writing Challenges: [link] - On Writing Love Poetry [link] - Show, Don't Tell workshop [link] - Reveal Your Writing Gears and Wires [link] - Dialogue Writing Exercise [link] - Myth Rewrite Workshop [link] - Imagery Scrapbook Workshop [link] - "Blow jobs for books" prompt [link] - "Dreamland" prompt [link] - 150 Writing Prompts Miscellaneous: Old writing help thread in the lit workshop forum: [link] ----- ----- ----- Featured Deviants and Clubs Helpful Links [link] - *SadisticIceCream's Publishing Resources [link] - the Poetry Foundation's official website [link] - =julietcaesar's list of useful writing blogs [link] - Grammar Girl's Quick & Dirty Tips for Better Writing [link] - Lit Resource Central [link] - dA Writing Resources [link] - dA Writing Clubs/Groups [link] - The dA Lit Forums [link] - Lit Community Chat [link] - dA Submission Policy [link] - dA Copyright Policy [link] - Wikipedia on Copyright [link] - Association of Authors' Representatives [link] - AgentQuery [link] - Resources for Writing Characters [link] - Ask others about details you're not sure of [link] - Search Engines for Serious Writers [link] - dA's Project Educate ----- ----- ----- |
| !WmCutterBlack - "Without empathy your characters can have no depth." |