Posts tagged creative writing

“Fog In The Valley”

by Paul Zimmer

Old combines dither and cough,
Cows amble vaguely into pastures,
Fences vibrate out to the end
Of their stringency, but all
This occurs beneath an opaque sea.

Last week in Manhattan a man
Walked up to me on a foggy morning
And asked for money. When I told
Him I had no change he exploded,
“Man, how do you think I feel,
Having to ask you for a hand out?”

The fog unloosens and slips
In patches up hillsides,
Hawks are first to ease off
Their perches, then small birds
Flitter out into the milky air.

Slowly things begin to connect,
School busses flicker along the berm,
Stitching together corners of fields
With houses, barns, patches of woods,
Things rise to take substance.

If I sold this house and land,
Took cash to the city and passed
Out hundred dollar bills all day
To destitute people, by evening
I could join them in the fog.

from Big Blue Train. © University of Arkansas Press, 1993. (via)

“On Punctuation”

by Elizabeth Austen

not for me the dogma of the period
preaching order and a sure conclusion
and no not for me the prissy
formality or tight-lipped fence
of the colon and as for the semi-
colon call it what it isa period slumming
with the commas
a poser at the bar
feigning liberation with one hand
tightening the leash with the other
oh give me the headlong run-on
fragment dangling its feet
over the edge give me the sly
comma with its come-hither
wave teasing all the characters
on either side give me ellipses
not just a gang of periods
a trail of possibilities
or give me the sweet interrupting dash
the running leaping joining dash all the voices
gleeing out over one another
oh if I must
punctuate
give me the YIPPEE
of the exclamation point
give me give me the curling
cupping curve mounting the period
with voluptuous uncertainty

© Elizabeth Austen, from The Girl Who Goes Alone, Floating Bridge Press, 2010. (via)

“Film Noir”

by Nicholas Christopher

The girl on the rooftop stares out
over the city and grips a cold revolver.
Laundry flaps around her in the hot night.
Each streetlight haloes a sinister act.
People are trapped in their beds, dreaming of
the A-bomb and hatching get-rich-quick schemes.
Pickpockets and grifters prowl the streets.
Hit-men stalk informers and crooked cops hide in churches.
Are there no more picket fences and tea parties
in America? Does no one have a birthday anymore?
Even the ballgames are fixed, and the quiz shows.
Airplanes full of widows circle the skyline.
Young couples elope in stolen cars.
All the prostitutes were wronged terribly in childhood.
They wear polka dot shirts, black gloves, and trenchcoats.
Men strut around in boxy suits, fedoras, and palm-tree ties.
They jam into nightclubs or brawl in hotel rooms
while saxophone music drowns out their cries.
The girl in the shadows drops the revolver
and pushes through the laundry to the edge of the roof.
Her eyes are glassy, her hair blows wild.
She looks down at her lover sprawled on the sidewalk
and she screams.
A crowd gathers in the pool of neon.
It starts to rain.

© Nicholas Christopher, from A Short History of the Island of Butterflies, Penguin, 1986. (via)

“The Murder Suspect, Moments Before He Is Confronted By Police”

by David Starkey

He sits in the driver’s seat of a borrowed
Corolla, Red Sox cap tilted low over
his anguished face. Across the street, two cops
huddle together, whispering, gesturing
once in his direction—yet he can’t find
the will to turn the key and pull away.
In the passenger seat, a Styrofoam
container of half-eaten beef chow mein,
cold rice stuck to the tines of a plastic fork.
The backseat is piled high with clothes.
In the glovebox, a loaded .38
snubby and half a box of cartridges.
He cracks the window to better hear the swish
of willow branches in the November wind.
There’s a gingery taste on his mustache,
and he wipes it with his sleeve as a blast
of heavy metal erupts from a pickup
rumbling down the street. His fingertips
tingle—probably with cold, possibly
from something else. There’s a needling twinge
above his heart, a flash of memory:
purple blouse, a braid of golden hair, a splash
of crimson on gray tile. The cops begin
to saunter over. Then, as he reaches
down, fumbling for his pistol, they run
toward him, guns drawn, shouting out his name.

© David Starkey, from A Few Things You Should Know About the Weasel, Biblioasis, 2010. (via)

“Autopsy In The Form Of An Elegy”

by John Stone

In the chest
in the heart
was a vessel

was the pulse
was the art
was the love

was the clot
small and slow
and the scar
that could not know

the rest of you
was very nearly perfect.

© John Stone, from Music From Apartment 8, Louisiana State University Press, 2004. (via)