My local Writing Group had an interesting prompt for this month's topic and I'd like to share my "underground attempt" with you. I call it that because I have created a peculiar habit in writing for the group. I get excited about the topic when I first hear it. I have all these ideas and plot lines and phrases in my head. I want to be ahead of myself and not wait for the last minute like I did the month before - and the month before that. I write something. I feel prepared. I am satisfied. And then, its Wednesday night and I get an itch to revise or scrap the whole thing and start anew. You know where this is going. I always end up with two pieces. One goes underground and the better one, or so I think, goes for critique.
This month, I'm proud of both of them. The prompt was: The Sound of Paper.
Here is my first attempt:
Mother awakes
with the turning Sphere,
cranes to hear the buzz
crackling along every crest of
her forever curves.
The felling, a holler, the crunching earth,
the loudest peeling scab.
She braces back,
breaking back
or limb for your purpose.
A soft moan at forest’s edge.
See her shaved legs, clipped nails,
the permed burning scalp?
All in accord with
the record keeping mass –
this glad act to tame, to make waste.
The same which prunes an eyebrow
and refuses to soothe
the red from the thread
dries rivers’ beds
leaves dead the
natural curl.
Her craving growl, gurgling
stomach, abscessed colon;
all bleed her trimmings.
Thus discarded
hardened, parched,
meant to be pure,
now obscures and clogs her pores.
In the interim we
click, slide, type, swipe,
meaning to return
the fallen heights to
the wild unfarmed,
unharmed.
She, with wings behind her eyes,
sees no frantic rush to disguise
a coffee stain crusted
on leaf, a pup listening
at each corner
no longer ripe from
Brother’s mouth
Mother awaits the return.
New Destination
