The Fat Buddha Smiles At Me by KarlyNoelleAbreu, literature
Literature
The Fat Buddha Smiles At Me
The fat Buddha smiles at me
As I sit in the Vietnamese nail salon,
I wonder if he realizes that
The incense in front of him is electric?
And I, paying money to sit
And have my feet bathed by a lady,
Am bowed to far more often, with
Sacrificial poses, and softly spoken words.
I wonder what it must be like
To be so enlightened that
I could be satisfied with plastic.
While the lady asks if I prefer
The blue or purple polish?
listen:
fall makes me think of leaving and of apple cider, though i never liked apple cider.
but i liked the idea of it.
listen:
two years ago i met a boy as fragile as dead leaves who called me his little spring girl. (i'd always liked autumn the best.) he kissed the two soft dimples on the small of my back and told me helikedme helovedme hewantedme.
and oh, by the way, "everything good must come to an end."
listen:
on our one year anniversary we picked out two pumpkins and i drew elephants on them for us to carve. he cut his out so aggressively that it lost its shape.
lopped off tusks and broken trunks became just a large, jagged ho
Beware the grammar gangsters!
The mafia of the literary underworld.
They saunter into stanzas,
Weapons concealed
Under their trench coats
Or in violin cases.
They can make you talk,
"With just a few well-placed speech marks,"
Leave you shouting! Where you should have whispered!
And pulp your bold statements into quavering questions?
They can, pepper, your, phrases with, commas,
Or bring your piece to a dead.
Full.
Stop.
They'll trap you (between brackets)
As you - dash - to the exit.
Then: punch a blunted colon
Into the gut of your text
Or worse;
Force-feed you a poisonous semicolon,
Then hack/slash your work to shreds.
T
In order to write a sestina,
you must start by being unsure,
quickly switching from cold to hot
to cold and to hot again,
the temperature being like a cat
in the Sahara desert at dusk.
Sit on your porch at dusk,
watch the clouds create their sestinas.
As you watch, allow your cat
beside you, her tongue lapping unsurely
from a cup. Look up again,
wonder if milk would be hot
if left out. It is hot;
There is a heat about dusk.
Forget. Forget about the poem again,
Look around. Everywhere, there are sestinas.
Not just in the cool, unsure
ripples your cat
makes, the gentle clink clink your cat's
teeth make as she tips h
Dear Honorable Mr. Holmes by triptychr, literature
Literature
Dear Honorable Mr. Holmes
Dear Honorable Mr. Holmes:
I bring to you hearty greetings from across the pond. However, as you likely have already surmised by the small smudge on the address bar of the envelope undoubtedly caused by a bead of my own sweat, I also deliver a quandary for the likes of your finely honed skills.
As you may know, a survey was recently conducted of 3,000 of your fellow Britons, asking whether certain figures were real or fictional. When your name came up, Mr. Holmes, 58 percent said you were real.
Isn't that preposterous? That means 42 percent believe you're a fake! I can only think that such hoodwinkery be caused by some sort of slanderous p
Master of Ravens
1
My little brother is nine years old the first time I decide to kill him.
During the night, snow fell over the jagged wreckage of our land. In the morning I realize he will follow me outside if I call to him. Like an awkward-limbed colt he'll stumble through the snowdrifts, and I can leave him to the ice and wind in the shadow of a three-walled building. No one will see me. Our father will think he has gotten lost on his own. I too will cry when they find his body. When the mourning is done, however, I will be my father's true and only son. 'Cam,' he will call to me, and I'll kneel down before him.
My father. Master of
250 christians can't be wrong by missedpoints, literature
Literature
250 christians can't be wrong
I.
The counselors tried to keep the children calm before meals. They lined them up by cabin in front of the dinning hall and preformed various stunts to pacify them until the tables were set. Sometimes they sang songs with hand motions:
"Baby Shark do do do do do do, Baby Shark do do do do do do, Baby Shark. Mama Shark do do do do do do, Mama Shark do do do do do do, Mama Shark, Daddy Shark do do do do do do…" The song continued to tell the story of a woman swimming who suffered a shark attack and flew to Heaven. It was an annoying tune with gestures that involved little more than clapping your hands together in a vertical snapping moti
With all apologies to Mr. Vonnegut.
So it goes.
No one knows that it was a coincidence that Adam caused the apocalypse a year before the world ended in 2008, and thats because everyones dead now. Thats part of the world ending. Heres how it happened.
In 2007, Adam heard about Kurt Vonneguts death on a Sunday News program. In about two minutes, the program had neatly and concisely summed up the writers life and the details of his death, then cut to commercial. Adam had never read any of Vonneguts books or even heard of him before, but he was intrigued.
The next day, Adam went d
My friend Friday spends Tuesday afternoons looking for things that no one else can find. These things are small and blend with the everyday so suitably, that they elude most of us, even after our morning coffee or cigarette. But invariably Friday finds them with ease, and sets them upon my doorstep every Wednesday morning, pawing at my breakfast with his fresh wonders.
I saw a boy die yesterday! He howls, the door slamming behind him. He is not in the same room as I; he is yelling this across my house at 5:30am, eliciting angry grumbles from my somber roommates. Sending the saloons doors clacking and banging, he gushes in