It's Still Life

Just Another Risky Alliteration The coldshimmering seais full of silvery squidwhich is whyI won’t swim after sunset These poems/prose are draft versions, written in participation of Miz Quickly’s prompts and Writers’ Digest (Poetic Asides) November poem-a-day challenge. The aim: to produce a chapbook for submission. ©Misky 2022 Shared with #amwriting on Twitter. Images are ©Misky, and…

I. (PA: Panel)Just Another Stroke It was the summer I turned 5,maybe I was 4, but it was summer.Dad always painted the fencein August, and as I watched the white paint being strokedup and down in long, slow anddeliberate sweeps of the brush, I told him that I’d never marrybecause I loved him. And he…

I.Just Another (Thoughtless) Memory I remember the skywas a loud shock of blue,the plastic table and chairs, an indifferent white. We aren’t talking.I can’t remember why. But you sit there,and watch me cryas you throw yourselfinto one last battle. I remember sitting undertroubled sky, the wind blowing blowing us out. II. (a thoughtful haiku) Rain…

A Gardener’s Story I. It’s a duel with nature,hack back nettlesand choke weed tendrils,slash away brambles that in August I’ll praise for blackberries, but for now, those thornsare dragon’s teeth.They biteand won’t be tamed. II. My mother grew hydrangeasthe colour of alpacas, pulledweeds with her bare hands. She took a scythe to the bramblesbut picked…

An Ekphrastic Poem: Melancholy (illustrated by an AI-Midjourney interpretation of Melancholy by Edvard Munch) There’s a palenessin his religion, it’s left him somewhere betweengenius and foolishness,between a polluted tideand a ruptured hollowness. On Sunday, after listeningto chanting priests, he fills out a Donor Card.He wants to donate a rib,make a tree branch out of it,or…