Dear Ten,
I can’t stand being photographed. From girl to girl to a house where so much as a breeze against my neck would spill over new bones and blood, I have been so many people. My face is a trick. My body schemes against me: today I couldn’t unlock my right hand. If you were here I would tell you, but we no longer inhabit the same country. Because I stayed indoors you left thinking you knew every corner of my life. But out of your sight there are other rooms. Buried under marks I wasn’t born with. Even on your last morning, your anger like a helm shielded your vision from all light. In our picture by the escalator, I didn’t know if I should smile. I believe you closed your eyes at the count of three on purpose. I don’t recognize anyone in the frame except the way you grip the handle of your suitcase. I imagine I see your dad.
Constructed from the words of Kimberly Alidio, Jai Arun Ravine, Pia C., Ching-In Chen, and Harold Bloom (via Pia C.).
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Prompts
‘A piano, by virtue of its size and weight, insists you have to come to it. Its size is formidable and its silence exponentially so. It always stands for what everything else in the room cannot say.’—Patrick Rosal
Bright uncanny music was beating through the room
We had come
afraid
to seek some long range
and less threatening death
for us
—Audre Lorde
Kimberly Alidio: “leave ‘holes’ in the texts so to allow and demand the reader’s escape through thinking and change rather than mesmeriz[e] with beautiful little object-poems” — Barbara Henning
Jai Arun Ravine: What’s your favorite ploy? http://www.ployii.com/
Pia C.: ‘1. Assymectricity: energy generated by lopsidedness. 2. Enigmagnetic: a person who attracts mysteries. 3. Indumbnitable: incapable of being dumbed down. 4. Beneviolent: helpful chaos. 5. Fauxbia: a fake fear. 6. Craptometry: ability to see through all the BS. 7. Adoregasm: when you treasure someone to the point of ecstasy.’—Free Will Astrology
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Housekeeping
Please post in the comments section of this blog entry with: 1) your writing in response to today’s writing(s) and 2) a prompt or question to share for tomorrow.
And if the comments are down, feel free to send your work to arkipelagirl [at] gmail.com, and I’ll post for you when the comments are fixed.
Full info on the process and this project can be found at this page.
So sorry for the extremely late post today. I’ll leave it open til early tomorrow morning.
