Featured Folder over at Lit-Visual-Alliance.
On the West WindI caress her cheek, my fingers grazing her silk like skin. Her breathing is light, and she murmurs in her sleep, almost too quiet to hear. I smile, but it doesn't reach my eyes; instead, it beckons the tears that are threatening to overflow. I fight them back as I reach out and cradle her to my chest, moving slow like a snail so as not to wake her. Her bosom rises and falls, and I feel her heartbeat pounding in rhythm with mine, creating our very own symphony. Our images flicker in and out of sight as I close my eyes. After what seems like an eternity, our figures have become transparent, and we move unseen through the dark palace. As I pass through my realm, I can hear the tortured screams of the damned as they beg for mercy. I brush their screams off; they deserve the torment for what they did. We glide past, seen by no one, but the noise disturbs her slumber, and she shifts in my arms, slight but restless. I move faster, almost flying, and the wind blows our hair behind us. The strainspired by
The Revolt of Ruckulus Raggerton RigglesThere's a quiet in the clearinginspired by
as the rabbits gather 'round
and one behind the other
they all wait without a sound.
And in that eerie silence
they're all wondering away
at what he has in store for them
and what he has to say.
"And who is he?" you might be asking
a question most absurd,
why it's Ruckulus Raggerton Riggles
the one hundred and seventy third.
He's the head of the royal treasury
the keeper of the hoard,
the one in charge of every carrot
the king has ever stored.
The silence breaks as he appears
and climbs upon a stump
while the rabbits of the forest
all huddle in a clump.
"You might be asking one another
why it is that you are here
and I promise you that soon enough
I'll make it absolutely clear."
"You see his majesty our king
has done an awful deed.
He has eaten every carrot.
He has eaten every seed."
At this an awful cry arose
a loud and clamorous din.
"If there aren't any carrots left
what will WE be eating then!"
Ruckulus raised a paw into the air
until the crowd had q
Fire With Fire
Part 1: Life and Death
Many often spoke of the price of life. Philosophers in nearly every civilization had dedicated their entire lives to speculating on it. One race had even attempted to build a computer the size of a city in an attempt to quantify it. But whatever the price of life was, one thing was sure: It was steep.
It was sometimes easy to forget just how precious life could be after gaining immortality and leading a life of warfare. The Maximal who called himself Gunslinger was not only gaining a lesson in perspective, but economics. Security work paid dirt, even in the slums where guards were paid relatively well. Nevertheless, he had been scrimping and saving for the past thirty years, working until he had enough energon to build a new body one part at a time and grant it the gift of life. He had even sacrificed maintenance on himself and his blue and yellow paint job was mostly worn away. Though, it was hard to tell in the shimmering violet and blue hues of light pr
Mature Content
Fire With Fire
Part 1: Life and Death
Many often spoke of the price of life. Philosophers in nearly every civilization had dedicated their entire lives to speculating on it. One race had even attempted to build a computer the size of a city in an attempt to quantify it. But whatever the price of life was, one thing was sure: It was steep.
It was sometimes easy to forget just how precious life could be after gaining immortality and leading a life of warfare. The Maximal who called himself Gunslinger was not only gaining a lesson in perspective, but economics. Security work paid dirt, even in the slums where guards were paid relatively well. Nevertheless, he had been scrimping and saving for the past thirty years, working until he had enough energon to build a new body one part at a time and grant it the gift of life. He had even sacrificed maintenance on himself and his blue and yellow paint job was mostly worn away. Though, it was hard to tell in the shimmering violet and blue hues of light pr
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Polishing VenusI wear a blue plastic retainer at night. It's painful, tight on my teeth, as if my mouth has outgrown it. I don't put it in often enough, so the shape of my jaw twists and changes, until I remember how much I despised braces and consent to slip it in, and I lie awake at night, loathing the imperfection of my teeth and the ache that pulses there as my mouth readjusts to the wires and plastic that force my jaw into the correct position.
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I wear glasses too – ugly things, dark maroon on top, with a thin, squishy plastic wire on bottom instead of another rim. Not many people know I have them. When I was a kid, I had the rimless kind – some part of me believed them to be less noticeable. I'd pop the lenses out and tell my father I slipped on the gravel at recess so I could get away with days without the slippery plastic ridge balanced on my nose, and the glances I got for being the only nine-year-old with glasses. Nowadays, I use contacts, and I slip my glasses case under my pillow
Tanka Ia swan, snow-feathered,
you seemed, until you molted
to reveal a duck
with feathers like the mountain:
snow melting, lilies blooming
Appetite Comes with the Eating1. The real horror of October
is the winter, the rising darkness.
It's said they caught him weeping,
heard him babbling about the steam in the snow,
the brown mass that had been a person—
his little girl, dead from the cold.
He ate his wife and daughters.
And when the villagers came for him,
he let them take him—to the tree
in the center of the square, where he hung,
discolored with frostbite and gangrene.
They called him Wendigo,
gave him to the spirit of the Dying Season,
and hoped that he would rest.
2. My ancestors had a word for his kind—
Strigoi.
They would have cut out his heart
to stop him from feeding.
He walked again.
Ate his fill of the town that killed him
and marched south, slept every spring
to wait for the Season of the Dying
to come again.
3. I saw the flesh-eater once, in my youth
in a Massachusetts town
near Boston, out on a frozen pond.
I saw his face beneath the ice,
saw his teeth bent with bone-crunching,
before he disappeared into the black w
Bless the AutumnLet us lie among the autumn leaves
And listen to the whispers made
By the slow-flowing hearts of trees.
Give thanks for fire and woodsmoke
And clandestine caresses under blankets
Piled high beneath the naked oak.
Bless the waning sun and warm chocolate
And the heat of lovers' hands and hearts.
Nightdance and ShadowplayCome on, all you ghosties – let's make one last stand.
Dive through the mirrors of our hands,
wonderland the way we script our souls
into the spine of each woman we love
like an arpeggio, like a broken chord
splitting the night sky of New Orleans
two months after Katrina painted the town.
Blue as the cracked and jagged line that snow-
shuddered mountains draw in the memory of sand
between sky and shattered, the calligraphy of the earth
we lie and say isn't our own, come on, all you ghosties.
Let's pretend that when the glass menageries broke,
they didn't become snow, that every time
the sky writes you a love letter, you don't feel evergreen
needling guilty beneath your holly skin,
a calligraphy we lie and say isn't our own.
She hikes stone hands against mountains,
a sharp cursive of shattered glass.
Come on, all you ghosties. Run.
Blue as lightning racing rain.
WaldeinsamkeitA murder of ravens
spits black
on a vermillion coloured day,
as a spine of leaves
crumbles under the pressure
of ghostly weight;
its pieces of autumn,
borne by a whirling breath,
brush a lonely thought:
This winter will be cold.