Christine E. Ray's Blog, page 14

NPR’s Books We Love: We were once a Family – Rachael Z. Ikins

They stole your grave,

every citadel I built there, torn down.

I said “You win” since it seemed so vital

that they possess a few square feet of

stone-strewn soil for their wreaths.



My heart stopped and started,

an oil change, lube job as illuminating

as the year the caul was cut from my right eye

and no more driving blind.

Who knew there was so much light in the world?



Universes of it reflected in flecks of granite

chiseled with frost furred in the letters of your name.

I never visit. It’s theirs now, a war they won without

my firing a shot. Beneath-crust, worms and

sow bugs till the soil.



My heart sings a song of missing you,

I build a citadel of air in a place

they don’t belong.



Seven years ago you disintegrated

in my arms as if instead of birthing me,

I absorbed you

back to where we both began

back beyond the grandmothers,

all the eggs linking us

a mobius necklace twirling

swirling through the universe



not constrained by time or

ownership or those who tear down citadels,

who plant their flags.

We are not of their world and

we belong only to ourselves

Photo by Boston Public Library on Unsplash

Rachael Z. Ikins followed her pen into the forest as a child. As with Gretel in the Grimm Brothers’ tale, a wicked witch forced her to reroute through valleys so dark she doubted the existence of the sun at times. A fabulous wizard held her heart in his hand. They fell in love. He urged her to release poetry from her soul. She lost everything before she finally understood her truth: write like a motherfucker, write or die. For poetry was the constant through all storms, the beloved she refused to relinquish. She won some prizes, published in journals and then books. When last seen, Ikins was feeding pickled jalapeños to a large dragon perched on the roof of her house—a dragon who bestowed her name upon Ikins’s cat. Sister souls of fire and passion.

Wish for Wings

you stand with your back to me

vulnerable

silent

I, transfixed

by how your wings attach

to blades of shoulders

already burdened by the weight

of humanity’s sorrow

of the demands

of gods with no mercy

how can mere bone

bear this additional weight

of a thousand ivory feathers

without folding

to the ground? 

the strip of bare skin

that separates

your magnificent wings

calls to me

my hand reaches out

palm extended

to trace

the path of smooth muscle

the intake of your breath

the rapid beats of our hearts

the only sound

as I press my cheek

to that vulnerable spot

you are stiff for a moment

before relaxing fully

against me

guiding my arms

around your waist

holding them tight

accepting the comfort

of my warm

human touch

© 2018 Christine Elizabeth Ray – All rights Reserved

Daily Creativity Prompt: We Were Once a Family

Every December, I take a deep dive into National Public Radio’s Books We Love list. Books are endlessly fascinating to me and NPR’s recommendations guide my holiday shopping as well as my To Be Read/ Listened To list for the upcoming year. I hope that these prompts inspire you creatively and encourage you to add at least one of these titles to your reading list for the upcoming year.

There is only one rule to this prompt challenge: the daily prompt should serve as the title of your piece OR all the words in the daily prompt should be integrated into your piece somehow.   

It is my honor and pleasure to publish your prompt responses on Brave & Reckless. I welcome poetry, prose, flash fiction, creative nonfiction, essays, and high-res original art inspired by the prompt.

How to Submit

Email your submission to her.red.pen.wordsmithing@gmail.comWriting can be submitted in the body of the email or as a separate Word document or PDFIf you are submitting writing, please include a suggested image to accompany your work. Unsplash and Pixabay are two of my favorite sites for royalty-free images.Your email should include your name EXACTLY as you want it to appear on Brave & Reckless, a short biography (if you haven’t sent me one in the last few months), and any links you want shared.

I will start accepting responses to the NPR’s Books We Love Creativity Prompt Challenge immediately, but I will not start publishing them until the day that particular daily prompt is published. For instance, writing and art inspired by the book title A Study in Drowning will be published starting January 4, 2024.

“Start with a sensational case that grabbed our attention: Two mothers who crashed their SUV over a California cliff, killing themselves and their six adopted children. Then add a reporter who knows her subject in depth – the inner-workings of America’s foster care system. Reporter Roxanna Asgarian spent nearly five years to reveal a truer story – about a system where a well-off white couple can dodge claims of abuse, but the children’s Black families had their kids taken quickly, leaving adults and siblings grieving for their broken family. Press coverage in 2018 puzzled over the motivation of the mothers. Asgarian more thoughtfully asks: What does this tragedy say about a foster care system where, in most cases, children are removed for issues of neglect and poverty, not for abuse?”

— Joseph Shapiro, correspondent, Investigations

NPR’s Books We Love: The Last Devil to Die – Georgiann Carlson

love was killed before I was born

kindness followed

I never knew either one

a few babies continued to be born

by accident

no one really cared

one way or the other

books were burned

so people could stop longing

for things they couldn’t have

and schools were closed

because intelligence

was said to be too dangerous

those things

said the government

were Devils

things that made people sick

things people kept searching for

things that didn’t exist

the government told people

they were killing those things

for their own good

everything they did

was for the good of the people

the last Devil to die

was hope

hope made the masses

believe things could change

and that

said the government

would distract them from their

seven day

ten hour work days

and the people thanked the government

for saving them from the Devils

called love, kindness, intelligence and hope

and thought themselves fortunate that they

had work to do each day

before they were given a government issued

dinner with enough food to keep them alive

Photo: Pixabay

Feminist, Vegetarian, Bookaholic , Animal lover, Writer, Artist, Chicago native, and lover of the pigeons who live there. Coo.  You can read more of my writing at Rethinking Life

Dissolution – Christine E. Ray

words

some days my savior

some days my hell

dissolve

into

fragmented syllables

lonely letters

that I cannot

reassemble

back

into meaningful

wholes

I lie

tell myself

I will grow accustomed

to this silence

these padded walls

© 2018 Christine Elizabeth Ray – All Rights Reserved

Daily Creativity Prompt: The Last Devil to Die

Every December, I take a deep dive into National Public Radio’s Books We Love list. Books are endlessly fascinating to me and NPR’s recommendations guide my holiday shopping as well as my To Be Read/ Listened To list for the upcoming year. I hope that these prompts inspire you creatively and encourage you to add at least one of these titles to your reading list for the upcoming year.

There is only one rule to this prompt challenge: the daily prompt should serve as the title of your piece OR all the words in the daily prompt should be integrated into your piece somehow.   

It is my honor and pleasure to publish your prompt responses on Brave & Reckless. I welcome poetry, prose, flash fiction, creative nonfiction, essays, and high-res original art inspired by the prompt.

How to Submit

Email your submission to her.red.pen.wordsmithing@gmail.comWriting can be submitted in the body of the email or as a separate Word document or PDFIf you are submitting writing, please include a suggested image to accompany your work. Unsplash and Pixabay are two of my favorite sites for royalty-free images.Your email should include your name EXACTLY as you want it to appear on Brave & Reckless, a short biography (if you haven’t sent me one in the last few months), and any links you want shared.

I will start accepting responses to the NPR’s Books We Love Creativity Prompt Challenge immediately, but I will not start publishing them until the day that particular daily prompt is published. For instance, writing and art inspired by the book title A Study in Drowning will be published starting January 4, 2024.

“Richard Osman’s books are a slyly sophisticated bunch, boasting emotional development equal to the memorable mysteries. Every Thursday, members of a wealthy retirement community apply their considerable talents to unsolved local crime. They begin with cold cases, then move on to active investigations, to the frustration of the local authorities. The core four – diarist and social butterfly Joyce, retired psychiatrist Ibrahim, Ron, the bombastic political activist, and Elizabeth, a former spy and natural leader – grow tighter with each installment, making The Last Devil to Die especially poignant. While ex-spy Elizabeth reaches an unmistakable turning point with her husband, whose dementia has grown acutely painful, danger lurks close to home as the crew tries to solve the recent murder of a friend. Thursday Murder Club mystery stands up well on its own, but given the richness of character and relationships, as a set, they’re bloody brilliant.”

— Carole V. Bell, culture critic and media and politics researcher

Daily Creativity Prompt: I Have Some Questions for You

Every December, I take a deep dive into National Public Radio’s Books We Love list. Books are endlessly fascinating to me and NPR’s recommendations guide my holiday shopping as well as my To Be Read/ Listened To list for the upcoming year. I hope that these prompts inspire you creatively and encourage you to add at least one of these titles to your reading list for the upcoming year.

There is only one rule to this prompt challenge: the daily prompt should serve as the title of your piece OR all the words in the daily prompt should be integrated into your piece somehow.   

It is my honor and pleasure to publish your prompt responses on Brave & Reckless. I welcome poetry, prose, flash fiction, creative nonfiction, essays, and high-res original art inspired by the prompt.

How to Submit

Email your submission to her.red.pen.wordsmithing@gmail.comWriting can be submitted in the body of the email or as a separate Word document or PDFIf you are submitting writing, please include a suggested image to accompany your work. Unsplash and Pixabay are two of my favorite sites for royalty-free images.Your email should include your name EXACTLY as you want it to appear on Brave & Reckless, a short biography (if you haven’t sent me one in the last few months), and any links you want shared.

I will start accepting responses to the NPR’s Books We Love Creativity Prompt Challenge immediately, but I will not start publishing them until the day that particular daily prompt is published. For instance, writing and art inspired by the book title A Study in Drowning will be published starting January 4, 2024.

“The stories we tell ourselves about our childhoods are often only partially true – tales we invent to make our youthful experiences make sense. But what happens when you revisit a foundational story and begin to unpack it? What happens when you realize that the people you once trusted were inventing tales of their own? This book follows a woman who travels back to teach a class at the boarding school she once attended – and to revisit the circumstances under which her former roommate died while they were at school. It’s an eerie look at how race and gender and youth shape our perceptions of guilt and innocence, and a story that reminds us that it takes more than one bad guy to get away with murder.”

— Leah Donnella, senior editor, Code Switch

NPR’s Books We Love: Cassandra in Reverse – Rachael Z. Ikins

I reach for a hand-thrown ceramic mug

the kettle spits, sieve of dried mint drifts

like snow across the mouth. Tea.

Mugs are mouths, some of them screaming.

Mouths you fall into, your heart in your talons,

a carapace. Boiling water.

Words claw up from the bottom,

small beetles that died, red black-dotted

wings stuck open.



Six carefully articulated shells

a spell, an incantation that robs your fingers,

something tumbles; the sound of broken glass shrills

over kettle-scream.

Lipstick brands someone’s teeth

and the kiss of scent, mixed mint/mother

summons a vampire to the rim.

Photo by Edz Norton on Unsplash Unsplash

Rachael Z. Ikins followed her pen into the forest as a child. As with Gretel in the Grimm Brothers’ tale, a wicked witch forced her to reroute through valleys so dark she doubted the existence of the sun at times. A fabulous wizard held her heart in his hand. They fell in love. He urged her to release poetry from her soul. She lost everything before she finally understood her truth: write like a motherfucker, write or die. For poetry was the constant through all storms, the beloved she refused to relinquish. She won some prizes, published in journals and then books. When last seen, Ikins was feeding pickled jalapeños to a large dragon perched on the roof of her house—a dragon who bestowed her name upon Ikins’s cat. Sister souls of fire and passion.

NPR’s Books We Love: Twisted Cross – Annette Kalandros

Time’s echo screams now,

a cacophonous chorus,

from another place.



Time’s refrain of hate,

echoing ever louder,

shatters the soul of freedom.



Waiting, time’s echo

burns upon the twisted cross,

screaming in despair.

Photo from ABC News. Original caption ‘The leaders of German American Bund give the Nazi salute to young men and women marching in Nazi uniforms, Aug.29, 1937 in Yaphank, New York.’

Annette Kalandros, a retired teacher, living in New Mexico, is honored to have work featured in the following collections: As the World Burns: Writers and Artists Reflect on a World Gone Mad. Through The Looking Glass: Reflecting on Madness and Chaos Within. The Pinecone Review: Be Proud with Pride Edition and Survival Edition. Women Speak: The Women of Appalachia Project. SETU International Magazine and Wounds I Healed: The Poetry of Strong Women. Hidden in Childhood: A Poetry Anthology. My debut collection is The Gift of Mercy. You can read more of her write at https://aikalandros.com/

NPR’s Books We Love: To Shape A Dragon’s Breath – Lynn White

The woman does not believe what she's seeing



as the purple dragon floats by



breathing rainbows



from flower filled puffs of breath.



It’s understandable.







After all,



this is not the usual sort of dragon



whose fire filled breaths register alarm.



But alarm registers,



nevertheless,



as this is not the usual sort of dragon



and no one knows



the shape of his next breath



and no one knows



how to shape it



safely.

Lynn White lives in north Wales. Her work is influenced by issues of social justice and events, places and people she has known or imagined. She is especially interested in exploring the boundaries of dream, fantasy and reality. She was shortlisted in the Theatre Cloud ‘War Poetry for Today’ competition and has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize, Best of the Net,  and a Rhysling Award. Her poetry has appeared in many publications including: Apogee, Firewords, Capsule Stories, Light Journal and So It Goes. Find Lynn at Poetry – Lynn White and Facebook.