Margot Eyring

Collage: Response

 Plunge

 Kathleen Finn Jordan

Inspiration Piece

Recall: the deep waters
Edge of cliff looking
and then
Anticipating the rush into the depths
Poised, set, off into the steep fall
Into fathoms of wispy forceful ocean breath
Swallowing the body in a total plunge
Some dives perfect
Others a ruin swirling into currents unfriendly
Cuts, bruises, pain, confusion
Emerging either refreshed and exhilarated or
Pained and weedy, hurting, parts crying out for mercy
A decision gone somehow wrong
Bringing chaos, confusion, the feeling of away from normal
The thought that safer waters could be surfed, swum
Safer ports investigated, safer life lived in the shallow spots
Far from plunge and peril, balanced and predictable
Ah– but where is the free, the fall, the expectation
The unsure and the grasp for more
The reach, the challenge, the risk
The pure joy when one surpasses what was expected
And grabs a memory — welling up for a lifetime
With its fullness and its promise of an ever greater thrust
An ever higher leap, an even deeper find, an ever more fulfilling
Gulp of life, Gasp of AHA, Glissade of space.
Choosing to spend life, boldly
Choosing to live on a startlingly rich canvas of brilliant color
Daring to plunge:  consequences be dammed.

Hands

Hands,

worn and scarred

gracing strings

with fingers curling, stretching.

Painting melodies with tongue and teeth.

Lashes close

forehead tips

The worry-worn soul bows its head

and praise flows forth.

***********

Response piece:

Singing Praise

By Christina Brockett

Inspiration Piece

Perspective

By Maureen O’Donnell

Response Piece

Jack

The dinghy rocks gently under his weight.  Jack nestles into the small cockpit, meant for one large person or two smaller, and no more.  He can feel the wind skating across the water: it carries the scent of brine and bracken, the smell of cut grass and the hint of exhaust – a powerboat long since departed.  No surprise.  Even in the slow ‘off-season’ some of the other lake cabins must be occupied.

There are lines, two of them, that tether him to the dock.  The stern line, near his elbow, is the easy one.  Jack gives one end of the rope a tug, releases it from the cleat, and tosses it onto the graying planks.  The bow line is harder; too late he realizes he should have done that one first.  A gust of wind, blowing away from the dock, pushes the small sail boat, pivots it stern-out around the remaining anchor point.

Without thinking he leans forward, but his legs are in the way.  The position is awkward and leaves him a few inches short of the rope.  He hesitates, then pushes himself out of the sling meant as a seat for the dinghy’s operator.  The shift in weight is too much for the centerboard and the boat pitches to one side, nearly dumping him in the water.  He thinks he still knows how to swim, but it’s April and the water is still cold.  He doesn’t want to test it.  He doesn’t want to be tossed between the dock and the boat.

Frustrated, he sits back and glares at the bowline.  The boat rocks more gently, counter to the violence beating in his chest.  Something as simple as a rope, and he can’t even manage that.

He wants to be out on the water.  Nothing is more important than releasing that dock line.

Ella

Early morning is her favorite time.  The sun rises, slow and lazy, over a world that looks washed-clean by night time.  Spring is no exception: although there’s still a cool bite, the wind promises a pleasant day.  She stands on her porch, a wraparound with a view of the lake, with her coffee mug in hand and sleep lingering in her eyes.  Her feet are bare.

It had seemed like a good idea, holing herself up in the lake cabin for the season, free of the distractions provided by family and well-meaning friends.  She wouldn’t offend anyone here.  Instead, she could focus on her manuscript, make meals far too large for one, or lay in bed all day crying.  Whatever she wanted.   The only person she had to worry about, alone on the lake, was Ella.

Six months and three hundred edited pages later, however, Ella has begun to fight Ella.

She has spent a half-year perfecting a novel that had been in the works since she was in college.  Immersed in a world of her own making, instead of the one that existed, now she’s forced to come up for air.  And without the friends, the family, or the novel, she has to think about the divorce.  His lawyer is supposed to call today, the call that will finally set her free.

Maybe she should rip out the phone.  Who needs a phone?

The wind ripples over the water, toys with a small, green-trimmed sail boat.  She watched the man inside struggle with the lines, twist awkwardly, like a fish left too long on deck.  She should help him.  He seems like a nice man, always with a determined look about him.  She couldn’t see his face now, but she could see the tension in the way he moved.  Ella sets the coffee cup down and starts down the steps.

Behind her, through the screen door, the phone jangles, harsh.  She stops, she hesitates: the lawyer, the important call.

She disappears inside.

Far Away

We hereby recognize the gallant and heroic actions of John Kelly, on the evening of July 13th and throughout his fifteen years of service, and present to him the Maryland Medal of Valor on this, the first day of January, 2010.  His dedication and service to cause and country will always be remembered.

#

Update Record: SSgt John Kelly, honorable discharge, February 2010.

#

To: Ella Carletti.

From: Mick Sheppard, Sheppard and Associates, PI

The findings of our report are enclosed, and include telephone records, photo surveillance, and witness statements regarding the relationship between Mark Carletti and A. Weymann.  Please contact us further regarding the settlement of final expenses, and if you have any additional questions.

#

Ms. Carletti, thank you for your submission.  Unfortunately, due to a high volume of submissions throughout the year, we have been unable to give your work a complete review.  We are unable to accept your manuscript.  Best of luck in your future endeavors.

Jack

The wind picks up, and he hears it snap across the bright green sail.  Jack gives the dock a shove and the boat rocks, tilts, wavers as if it’s not sure it truly wants to go out.  He tugs on the main sheet, threaded through a pully between his knees, and the sail finally stands up to the wind.  In a moment, the dinghy glides along the water with the grace of a dancer.

He tacks, and then tacks again, cutting angles across Lake Anna.  The dinghy corners like his first car, the shiny yellow mustang that drew doe-eyed girls and overzealous patrol officers like flies.  He doesn’t crash this one.  He flies, with the wind on his face and freedom rushing through his ears.

Too soon, the sun begins to sag behind the trees.  Reluctant, he turns toward home.

Ella
When she hangs up the phone, the sound is loud in the silence.  The relief she’d expected to feel, an exhale all the way from her bones, is absent.  This wasn’t the way things were supposed to happen: she’d reached the end of her rope and now she was free.  She was supposed to feel something.  She was supposed to be different.

She pinches her forearm.  It hurts.  She felt that.

Ella walks.  She walks out of the cabin, across the yard, and into the woods.  She walks to lose herself, to think, to find the person she is now supposed to be.  When she returns, the pier is empty.  She sits on the steps, hugs her knees to her chest, and waits.

Right Here

When he angles the boat toward the pier, he sees a woman walking onto the boards: a small woman with light eyes and dark hair, and a nose that plays a significant part of her face.  He’s not sure what she wants, but he wishes she would go away.  He wonders if she’s waiting for the powerboat, or maybe checking the lines of another, but she doesn’t.

She moves around the wheelchair, and holds out a hand.  When he doesn’t throw her the rope, she smiles.  “I’m Ella.”

“I can do it,” Jack says.

“I know you can.”

She says it simply, but leaves her hand outstretched.  The line, wet, slaps against her palm.  He looks different, this close.  There are lines around his mouth where he wants to smile.

“Jack.  You live there?”  He points to the wrong house.

“There.”  She lashes twists the bowline around the cleat, then points.  Waits until he’s secured the stern, then looks.  “We’re neighbors.”

“So we are.”

“For a few months now.”

“Is that right?”  He sits in the boat and she stands on the dock.  She steps back.

“You should come have dinner some time.”

“Sure,” he says, and he shakes his head, distracted, in the way that people do when they know they will not.

“Alright.  See you around.”  She turns and walks down the pier.  She climbs the path back toward her house, and when she reaches her porch, she looks back.  He is pulling himself up into his chair.  Once settled, he looks over his shoulder, in her direction, in a way that tells her eventually, he will come.

Ella picks up the coffee mug from the morning, and goes inside to wash cold coffee down the drain.

Resilient Creatures Meet Technology by Kristi Conley

A response to:

Information Technology

By Marla Deschenes

The click of the keyboard fills the otherwise silent house

This house without heart

Without softest whispers to twitch as night approaches.

Only plastic and the twisted curling cords

Snakelike, enveloping your haven slowly,

Crossing hidden under carpets and through walls.

A welcomed honored guest,

Bringing information at the speed of molton sound.

I stand dripping with the oppressive summer heat

Wondering how we will remove ourselves from the earth,

Only to glance at it in photos

On a rapidly aging screen.
Thunder calls my name in the distance.

The trees outside shake and bend in the dance of rain drops.

I imagine the anger of the Mother at us all

Crashing in as wind and cold water and blackened skies

For all that we have done to maim her.

Her heart still beats for us

But her anger is real and evident In her power.

And she will seek to take back that to which we believe we have claim.

This house will not stand in the future when I am gone

Our bones will be buried with mechanical parts

And the earth will ended up cleaned

Leaving only the most resilient creatures

And not us.

Never us.

Theresa Kulstad
Inspiration piece

Flak
By Jewel Beth Davis
Response

What the flak am I doing on this Lude-forsaken planet? How the flak did I ever end up here? One minute I’m floating in empty space in my sweet little souped-up Aero Lynx with my good buddy Carna the horn dog. The next thing I know, I’m lying alone in the killing heat of some desiccated locale on this crappy repulsive world called Earth. For Lude’s sake, this is a place that doesn’t even acknowledge life on other planets. There’s no way I’m staying here. Get me the flak out of here. Okay don’t panic. Take it easy, Sod-boy. You’ll be fine. Just think. Think and breathe. Breathing, that’s what got you through every Constellation Exam you ever took.

Sod’s bright white hair stood up on end in a modified Mohawk. He was a good-looking humanoid so the fem genders told him, with smooth grey skin, no acne. He was a big guy and walked on two muscular legs with a fin at each ankle. He was very tall for the masc genders on his planet and except for the gray skin he could probably pass for those masc genders of Earth who built their bodies up in gymnasiums where foolish Earthlings sweated for no purpose.

Sod took several deep cleansing breaths and looked around with new eyes. He scanned his environment as analytically as he could. The sky was the sky. It happened to be a nice day on Earth so it was varying shades of blue with lots of the white stuff tacked on. But the rest of it was wholly unappealing.

Dry brown and reddish ground stretched from horizon to horizon every which way he looked. Here and there, tufts of green sprouted but they must have battled with the rest of the environment to emerge. And likely wouldn’t last long. A single bird with an impossibly long wingspan lofted towards him. It was mainly an ecru color but the tips of its feathers looked as though they’d been dipped in chocolate. Sod did not recognize the bird from his Ornithology of the Universe textbook.

Other than that, he could see deep rust-colored canyons in front of him about five drilos away. And the heat. His lungs rasped when the breath went through them. It must be at least 110 peqans. He wasn’t used to it. His ship and home were both climate controlled. Everything was on Nede.

Nede was such a beautiful planet; he couldn’t imagine why anyone would live anywhere else. Thank Lude his fly suit was equipped with water straws and cooling apparatus. Even so, the sun beat down on his head and face.
He sensed his face was already starting to dry and crack. On Nede, the sun’s UV rays were automatically filtered. These people must get cooked daily.

Sod had been kneeling. Now he stood. He knew he had to move. He couldn’t remain stagnant or he’d fry. He had to try to find shelter. All he could see were a few scraggly trees here and there with almost no leaves. They would provide no shelter.

He began to walk toward the canyons. He didn’t know how many hours were in a day on this planet but the sun was almost directly overhead and he figured he had a long stretch before the sun would even begin to set. Damn his ego for not wearing his helmet while flying. It would have protected his brain and also had automatic cooling. He needed a hat and obviously he’d have to make one, but with what? Nothing here to use. He sipped nonstop on a water straw implanted near his chest plate. It was dead quiet here other than an occasional buzz of a big flying insect.

As he walked, (stumbled was more like it), over the uneven terrain covered with prickly plants that stung him, he noticed little furry creatures eyeing him from behind scrub brush and tumbleweeds. Their eyes were black and shiny. He didn’t think he needed to worry about them. Just in case, he kept moving as fast as the heat would allow. They were probably just curious. Well, he was curious too. About how he could be flying one minute above this planet and the next, on it. No ship, no Carna, no food, nothing. This planet was so brown and wasted, he didn’t see how life could exist here if everywhere was like this. Of course, he didn’t know. There could be other climate sectors.

He tried to think back on what exactly was occurring just before he appeared here. He and Carna were laughing but about what?

“Professor Sargon was really after your ass when you messed up the experiment with the Chinglies,” Carna said. His hair stuck out in bright red points all over his head. The red hair dye complemented Carna’s skin shade.

Sod piloted the Lynx and Carna was navigator. They were just goofing around. They zipped down one wormhole into a universe and then found another and whooshed up that one to a different universe. Somehow, they ended up near the Milky Way and in proximity to the only peopled planet on this end of the galaxy.

Nobody bothered with Earth. They were painful humanoids, obsessed with power and materialistic in the extreme. Nobody visited this planet because the people here were so fearful of life on other planets that they’d probably shoot any visitors right out of the sky before they could even communicate. That was the rumor anyway. Why did Lude even create them or continue to protect them?
Sod couldn’t figure it out. Earthlings were the butt of jokes on every planet in every galaxy.

“The Chinglies,” Sod laughed. “The Chinglies were everywhere. On the walls, the floors, the ceilings. Sargon looked like she was about to have apoplexy.”

“What a mess! I never had that much fun in an Experimental Science class before in my life. I am so flakking sick of detrums and santons,” Carna said.

“Not me,” said Sod, “I flakking love detrums and santons. I’m just going to cry when we finish up that unit.”

“Flak you,” Carna said and threw an energy bar at Sod’s head but missed.

“Flak you,” Sod cried, “You flakking skimmy, suggy, son of a tofull.” He caught the bar and flung it back at Carna and hit him in the chest. They were both laughing so hard, they could hardly catch a breath. They wheezed and discharged intermittent high-pitched shrieks.

That was it. That was the last thing Sod remembered before he found himself here. He was in the ship laughing and then he was here.

What the flak? he thought. This sucks tofulls.

There was no flash of light. Neither of them had touched any buttons or given commands to the P-yuter.

Sod tripped over a long tubular undulating creature of geometric patterning, which hissed at him. A small forked tongue came out of the creature’s mouth. “Woh,” Sod said, and ran in no direction and every direction, his fear seeming to mist around him in tangible form.

If he ever got back to his ship, he’d turn it right around and head for home. He’d go right to his dorm and then straight to the library to study for his Constellation Exams. He’d stop flakking around all the time and get serious. He’d find Scohee, his femfriend, and tell her so. She was always ragging on him to take his life more seriously. He’d do everything he should, as long as he wasn’t stuck forever on this Lude-forsaken planet. Please, Lude, please.

Sod stumbled on a rock and fell to the ground. He gouged his knee, which trickled blood. “GAT!” he screamed and fell on his arm. “Stinking GAT!” He knew he wrenched something because it hurt like a son of a tofull. He was flakking hot. No, he was scalded. His skin was no longer grey but was a deep pink with grey edges. The bruises were turning black and yellow, his muscles pulsed with pain, and he felt like crying. But he wouldn’t; no, he wouldn’t. He dropped his head to his hands.

A humming whirring sound like a top of the line blender broke through to his awareness. He blinked and looked up. There was a tear in the fabric of the sky and his ship appeared, hovering above him. The bottom panel opened and a familiar face appeared. It was Professor Sargon.

“Gotcha,” she said.

What’s Wrong with Right Now_(mp3)
By David Berman
Inspiration piece

Above and Below
By Grace Burns
Response

Party above -

Bursts of burnt orange, indigo blue

and glowing green illuminate the horizon

with their technicolor dance.

Venus, not to be ignored,

pierces the edge of the evening sky

and taunts the setting sun.

You have hogged the spotlight

enough today. It is my turn

to be the brightest one!

The party continues a few moments longer.

Meditation below -

She stands in shadowy solitude

and stares, transfixed, at

the beauty over her head and

reluctantly begins her trek home

as the sky’s hues blend into grey

and grey darkens to black.

She silently thanks God,

for the blackness in her heart is gone now.

At last, she knows peace.

______________________________________

Note: All of the art, writing, and music on this site belongs to the person who created it. Copying or republishing anything you see here without express and written permission from the author or artist is strictly prohibited.

Hive
By Lauren B. Flax
Inspiration Piece

They assured me that the hive was dead. With each strike of the sledgehammer, pieces of plaster fall away from the ceiling; some pieces cling together by stands of horsehair as they fall to the floor, while smaller flecks catch in my hair and beard. I remind myself that all of this work and the temporary move down the hall will be worth it when our bedroom has smooth walls and good insulation to keep out the cold this winter. The exterminators were here three times, and while the floor upstairs is no longer hot over the hive, I still wonder if at some point this sledgehammer will strike a spot made soft by years of honey and decay and release thousands of angry, panicked bees into my face.

One night mid-summer, after we had been seeing bees swarming under the third floor window for a few weeks, I took a ladder to the side of the house to check it out, expecting to see a hive under one of the cedar shingles. Instead I saw hundreds of bees flying in and out of the house through a heart shaped hole a few feet under the window. I went up to the third floor bedroom that would have been the baby’s room and pushed the boxes and bags of Char’s old, smaller clothes out of the way to make a path. Halfway across the room, I noticed the floorboards were warm under my feet. I took a few more steps toward the window, thinking the warmth might be from the sun coming through, but the room faces north. So I knelt on the floor, and as I brought my ear to the floorboards I heard it- the chaotic vibration of thousands of bees. It was more of a hum than a buzz, thousands of wings and bodies, their hive a machine that thrummed with its own life.

My neck strains from looking straight up at the ruptured ceiling. I am getting into the lathe over my head now, bringing down slats of wood with the plaster. My shoulders burn, my face itches from the dust, and my legs are tight from gripping the ladder. I should have called some friends to help –Char was right about that– but really I was looking forward to spending the day with no one to talk to, nothing to explain, and nothing to do but knock shit down.

When I had knocked out all the plaster and lathe I could reach, I climbed down the ladder and moved it a few feet toward the back of the room, away from the spot where I knew I would find the hive. They assured me the hive was dead, but I wasn’t ready to risk disturbing it, to face the thrumming anger of the live bees, or to have a hand in the quiet dismantling of their dried out chambers.

.

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Note: All of the art, writing, and music on this site belongs to the person who created it. Copying or republishing anything you see here without express and written permission from the author or artist is strictly prohibited.

Pianos by Kristi Conley

(Inspiration Piece)

Forgotten Music

by Marla Deschenes

(Response piece)

Forgotten music
The casualties of faster, cooler cars
Rock star hair, and screeching tight guitars.
Casualties of nothing more
Than popular and whim.
The sunshine burns us all now
Not just those who venture too close.
The keepers of the ashes, of the burned up bits of memories and photographs
Of the burned up phoenix
Of all that has burned.

Forgotten music
Touch me and the music locked within
Will struggle to the surface
Breaking free of chains, and conformity.
I have been battered and broken
Locked up and forgotten
In this place with chalk gray floors and grayer futures.
The first touch of paint
The beginning of a song.

A song of your kindness
And my new tattoo.

Forgotten music
Pushing forward through the mist of eyelid flutter dreams
As sunshine filters in to glisten
On my wooden, painted flesh.
The melodic surging of our often misplaced song
The bursting forward of our happiness
And nothing will ever separate us one from the other ever again
And we will dance
And remember all our once omitted songs.

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Note: All of the art, writing, and music on this site belongs to the person who created it. Copying or republishing anything you see here without express and written permission from the author or artist is strictly prohibited.

Amanda Whitener
Inspiration piece

Forever Perfect
Val Bonney
Response

There was a standard,
before you left,
of perfection
surpassing all other degrees
of beauty
held to be perfect.

Plump-cheeked flesh
more downy-soft than any peach
and rosebud lips;
eyes almond-shaped and olive-hued.
All Flora’s grace in one small,
flawless visage.

Now,
peachy skin wrinkles and rots; almond eyes
see no more than does an olive stone;
dead rose petals wither,
never to bloom
or taste the morning dew.

But I’ll remember

(not the bruises and scars
made by some other hand –
for they were not you;
merely feral marks of a lesser creature,
unable to thrive, to survive beneath
your breathtaking radiance)

loveliness beyond
what this world can bear.
Though you’re gone, in my heart
and memory
forever perfect you’ll stay.

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Note: All of the art, writing, and music on this site belongs to the person who created it. Copying or republishing anything you see here without express and written permission from the author or artist is strictly prohibited.

Frank Gibson
Response

Evolution
By Neil Ellman
Inspiration piece

When there is no life
In empty seas
Desolation lives
With possibilities
Of single cells
That multiply
Becoming multitudes
Becoming eyes and mouths
From fins that swim
To feet that crawl
From ageless seas
With ageless hope
Of being born
Just once
To know
That loneliness fades
When grace begins
On solid ground
Where it can walk
Upright.

.

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