Christine E. Ray's Blog, page 21

NPR’s Books We Love: The Salt Grows Heavy – V.J. Knutson

Intentions are solid
rock solid –
and I am salt of the earth
committed

The recipe –
yes, I use recipes now,
mental faculties uncertain –
perched in clear sight

I will chop
and dice

and stir
and spice

Determined
to push through
cramping muscles
onset of dizziness

Sweat of my conviction
blurring sight,
I’m almost there,
just a pinch of salt

But the salt grows heavy
and my hands noncompliant
and try as I might,
the grinder does not grind

The mechanism falling
the shaker crashing
splitting, granules
covering the floor

I, too far gone now,
emit a guttural sound
inviting rescue –
hopefully with a broom.

(VJ Knutson.  Image my own)

VJ Knutson is a former educator now living with chronic illness.  Poetry, photography, and art fuel a passion for living. You can read more of V.J.’s writing at One Woman’s Quest

Lost Key

the transformation

was so slow

so gradual

that I was unaware

bones had turned glass

joints brass clockwork

until they seized

from lack of lubrication

made me stumble gracelessly

onto cracked tiles

hands once strong

supple

now tremble

fail to grasp

fail to open

jars and tubs

of balms

of potions

that clutter dresser top

displacing brushes

jewelry with delicate clasps

making empty promises

to ease aches

pains

I now wind down

an underpowered automaton

dust a fine coating on pale skin

words once nimble on my tongue

swim in and out of view

bright as koi

frustratingly elusive

in brain rendered too sluggish

too viscous

to gather them

in silver butterfly nets

and set them free

he transformation

was so slow

so gradual

that i was unaware

that bones had turned glass

joints brass clockwork

until they seized

from lack of lubrication

made me stumble gracelessly

onto cracked tiles

hands once strong

supple

now tremble

fail to grasp

fail to open

jars and tubs

of balms

of potions

that clutter dresser top

displacing brushes

jewelry with delicate clasps

making empty promises

to ease aches

pains

i now wind down

an underpowered automaton

dust a fine coating on pale skin

words once nimble on my tongue

swim in and out of view

bright as koi

frustratingly elusive

in brain rendered too sluggish

too viscous

to gather them

in silver butterfly nets

and set them free

Image courtesy on Pinterest

© 2018 Christine Elizabeth Ray – All rights Reserved

Daily Creativity Prompt: The Salt Grows Heavy

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.

“A voiceless mermaid flees her prince’s kingdom, with a masked plague doctor, after the kingdom is devoured and destroyed by her monstrous progeny. Instead of safety, they find a violent cult of children presided over by three surgeon-saints who claim control over life itself. Here is hunger, violence and beauty. Here is prose that gnaws at you; you feel it in your gut. Cassandra Khaw neatly vivisects fairy tales to create something as gorgeous as it is gory – and it is gory. There’s meat to sink your teeth into in this fierce, elegant abattoir of a story. But dig through the viscera, and you’ll find something surprisingly tender and hopeful.”

— Jessica P. Wick, writer and book critic

Hangover

I wake in a nest of pillows and blankets that smell of fresh straw and heather, blood and sex.  Way too much light is coming in for this to be my city apartment, with its blackout shades and heavy curtains. I must be in my crash pad, the shell of a crumbling church a couple miles off the highway. My head aches, my mouth is dry, and I don’t remember coming back here last night. If I am completely honest, most of the details of last night are hazy. What little I can recall is a kaleidoscope of impressions: a biker bar, the aroma of leather and cigarette smoke, the taste of smooth whiskey, raucous laughter, loud music.  The pile of cash spilling out of the front pocket of my discarded jeans makes me think I must have had a good night at the pool table.

I untangle myself from the threadbare blankets, stand on the hard stone floor and stretch, working out the morning stiffness. It is then that I notice you sitting in the shadows a few feet away, staring at my unfurled wings. Thousands of white feathers stretch across the framework of these hollow bones. I note that I could use a bath or a shower. My feathers are dull and crumpled from sleep.

I am vain about my wings.

Your expression is unfathomable. You are not unattractive and appear to be in a similar state of undress. For the life of me, I cannot remember if you are last night’s lover or my prisoner. For a long moment, I consider our nudity, my swollen knuckles, your split lip, the dried semen on my thighs, the dried blood on my naked belly.

Could go either way. Perhaps both?  I have had crazier nights.

You don’t move any closer to me. I can’t tell whether you are currently restrained or just cautious about approaching me. I wish again that my memory of last night was a little clearer.  I mentally promise myself for at least the thousandth time that I will cut back on my drinking and start spending my evenings alone in my apartment with a good book, maybe catch up on Game of Thrones. Clean up my act.

Yeah, that’s going to happen.

“Are you an angel or demon?” you ask from your corner.

You sound more wary than frightened. I respect this. You have a pleasant voice, deep and melodic. An Irish accent, I think.

I consider your question, turning it over in my mind. I suppose it’s a fair question but it lacks a certain amount of… imagination. I grab the bottle of water next to the makeshift bed and take a long swallow before responding to you.

“What makes you think they aren’t one and the same?”

You lift your arm easily out of blankets to catch the partially full water bottle I toss to you.

One mystery solved.

© 2017 Christine Elizabeth Ray – All Rights Reserved

Daily Creativity Prompt: Our Hideous Progeny

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 plot at the beginning of this book sounds almost slapstick: An ambitious but struggling scientist couple has a harebrained idea to construct a prehistoric sea creature – and bring it back to life. But beyond the somewhat fantastical premise lies a story of two people trying, with mixed success, to find meaning in their lives and their relationship after suffering a stillbirth. It’s a reconsideration of the Frankenstein story, of course – one that looks at what the impulse toward life can create and what we owe the creatures we’ve brought into this world, no matter how feared or misunderstood they may be.”

— Leah Donnella, senior editor, Code Switch

Prayers for the World – Hanlie Robbertse

There are no more prayers

To offer for the world,

Only empty words from vacant hearts.

People divided by greed and lust of power,

Eyes blinded, believing the lies…

Truth been turned to dust, and division the drive…

All I can do, is to offer an invocation to the divine –

A request for unity and peace.

Photo by Daniel Mingook Kim on Unsplash

Hanlie Robbertse is a South African born writer that uses her writing to give voice to topics such as mental health, depression, anxiety, grief, self-love, and other inspirational/spiritual themes. She is passionate about telling stories in creative form that can help bring change to the world and also to elevate those difficult things that are often not talked about openly or even shut down in our hurting world. You can find her at:https://www.facebook.com/IamHanlie

Image by karan pal from Pixabay

NPR’s Books We Love: Symphony of Secrets – Lynn White

Do you have a secret life,
with secret places explored
only by yourself?
Do you?
Tell me about it,
let me in.
No you can’t,
of course you can’t,
it’s a secret.
Only you can go there.

So I must imagine
your secret life for myself.
May I?
Perhaps a house
with another family in it.
Perhaps a box hidden
under the floor
containing
old love letters
or pornographic magazines

Am I getting warm?
Of course you won’t say.
Well, you can’t say.
For you are part of
my secret life.
My imaginings,
my dreams and fantasies.
And they are part of me.
As real to me as the life I expose.
but no one can go there.
They’re my secrets.
What about you?
Do you have a secret life?
Do you?

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.

NPR’s Books We Love: Symphony of Secrets – Georgiann Carlson

“What are you playing?”

“Something I wrote over the weekend,” she said.

“What’s it called?”

“Symphony of Secrets.”

He nodded. “Did you write it about your family?"”

“I did. I remember their silence, as if their secrets had stolen their voices.”

“Every house has them,” he said.

“That’s why I wrote the music.”

“So everyone will recognize it?”

“Yes,” she said, smiling at him. “I tried to make it beautiful, because I want the music to say what they never could.”


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

Memory Brushes Past

memory’s delicate tendrils

reach out

brush the nape

of my neck

cause an electric shiver

that courses

down my spine

the past

whispers

syllables

sweet and breathy

that tickle

my ear

remember

it implores

remember 

crisp white sheets

whiff of cedar

sound of the ocean

butterfly brush

of eyelashes

against

salty skin

kisses

so soft

they dissolved like sugar

and lemon

on my eager tongue

© 2017 Christine Elizabeth Ray – All rights Reserved

Daily Creativity Prompt: Symphony of Secrets

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.

“This haunting and heartaching second novel is a rarity – a suspenseful dual-timeline thriller about icons and hidden figures in music. Like the star of Brendan Slocumb’s debut, The Violin Conspiracy, Josephine Reed defies expectations. In the early 20th century, her options are severely limited; she’s a young Black woman and, though it wouldn’t have been called this then, neurodivergent. She’s also enormously talented, and her art is everything. She followed her passion to New York, writing music in secret, doing odd jobs, and sharing an apartment with a new friend, the ambitious but struggling composer Frederic Delaney. While Fred gets famous, Josephine fades away like so many new arrivals. Decades later, musicology professor Bern Hendricks receives an enticing call from an institution inviting him to restore Fred’s long-lost handwritten opera score for performance. What the young music professor and his high-tech partner Eboni discover could shake the foundation to the ground.”

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