Christine E. Ray's Blog, page 23

NPR’s Books We Love: The Frozen River – Georgiann Carlson

it looked safe
people had been skating on
the frozen river
that very morning
she tapped the edge of the ice
with the blade on her skate
then she took a deep breath
and glided forward
no one was around
she had the ice to herself
Joni Mitchell’s
I wish I had a river
I could skate away on…
kept running through her mind
as she twirled and skated figure eights
everything was perfect
until she heard the ice crack
she looked up
the line was running all the way
from shore
before she could move
she was beneath the frigid water
her wet clothing pulling her down
her breath gone
and in that moment
she just let go
dying is easy
she thought
there’s really nothing to it


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

Writing on the Wall

I read the

writing on the wall

neon graffiti

composed of

cryptic symbols

stunning words

of power

rage

grief

that sting

my bare skin like sleet

ice crystals that burn

and freeze on contact

I recognize your

artist’s tag

I long to

pull out

cans of spray paint

from my battered

backpack

connect the dots

with hunter green

soften the edges

silver and mauve

rewrite the narrative

midnight blue

but this is not

my territory

I am unsure of

my welcome

on your turf

these days

I reluctantly

turn away

and walk

city streets

concrete and steel

broken glass

strewn sidewalks

to my 3rd floor

walk-up

rows of deadlocks

and chains

on the door

never certain if

their purpose is to

keep others out

or keep my creative

madness contained

in this room

of my own

blank canvases

await

I pause

briefly

consider

what I want

what I need

to express

and lose myself

to the process

weaving words

of love

of healing

spinning dreams

painting longing

etched with light

a thing of

beauty

that you may

never see

© 2017 Christine Elizabeth Ray – All Rights Reserved
Revised © 2018 Christine Elizabeth Ray – All Rights Reserved

Winter White – Christine E. Ray

I paint

melancholy

on winter white

parchment

the texture

crisped rice

beneath

sable tip

frosted breath

hovers

cloudlike

above

brush strokes

leaving

delicate

shapes

obscured,

unfathomable

© 2021 Christine E. Ray – All Rights Reserved

Photo by freestocks on Unsplash

Daily Creativity Prompt: The Frozen River

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.

“Dig your crime novels blanketed with a late 18th-century, New England snow? How about with a capable, middle-aged midwife in the role of detective, telling the men in power things they absolutely do not want to hear? This compelling story begins in a river community in Maine with a body frozen in the ice; it unspools with the alleged assault of a minister’s wife. This is a most uncozy mystery that addresses the unbalanced power dynamics of men and women, rich and poor. Bonus: The character of the midwife and some plot points are based on a real person, Martha Ballard. Not quite true crime but true enough!”

 — Melissa Gray, senior producer, Weekend Edition

NPR’s Books We Love: Fizzing – Lynn White

Sometimes

I long for those childhood days

When the sun shone everyday

and lemonade was kitchen made

from lemons

and sugar

and tap water,

refreshment without fizz

scooped from a bowl

not poured from a plastic bottle

filled with gas and tightly sealed

filled with artificial flavours

to bring a hint of lemon

to the sweet fizz.

Oh yes,

take me back

to those lemonade days

of my childhood.

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: The Wren-The Wren – Georgiann Carlson

“You are so very small,” said the dragon, leaning in close. “I almost missed seeing you."



“I don’t mind being small,” said the wren. "I’m quite bold and LOUD. My songs are complex.”



“Your life is short.”



“It’s about how one lives life, not about how long.”



“I’m not sure about that,” said the dragon, frowning. “Where do you keep your treasure?”



“What treasure?” asked the wren.



“Your gold and gems. Surely, you have some.”



“I do not,” said the wren. "What would I do with gold or gems? They are of no value to me.”



“No value?” asked the dragon, shocked.



“None at all.”



“I don’t understand.”



“I might be very small, and my life might be very short, but I am free. I answer to no one and I do not have the burden of treasure, to guard and watch over.”



“Something to think about,” muttered the dragon, to himself. “What do they call you, tiny one?”



“I am called, Wren. When people see me they say look, there’s the wren."



“But that is your species, is it not? I am a dragon, but my name is Althor.”



“Well, I’m Wren. Pleased to meet you Althor. Would you like me to sing for you?”



“I would like that very much,” said the dragon, sitting up straight.



So, the wren sang. She sang like she never sang before.



When she finished, the dragon wiped at his eyes and said, “You were wrong.”



“Wrong about what?” asked the bird.



“You have the greatest treasures of all. You have freedom and a song more beautiful and magical, than any gold or sparkling gem.”



“Thank you,” said the wren.



The dragon moved closer and whispered, “If you ever need me Wren, you have but to call my name, and I will come to you.”



“I would tell you the same thing, but I probably wouldn’t be much help.”



The dragon smiled. “Don’t be too sure about that.”



“I’m pretty sure,” said the wren, "but you can call me anyway. If I hear you, I’ll do what I can.”



The dragon nodded. “Until we meet again,” he said, opening his enormous wings.



“Until then,” said Wren. “Be safe and well.”



The dragon took to the air, as Wren held tight to her branch and watched, until her new friend disappeared into the clouds.

Photo:  Joshua Cotten, Unsplash

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

Daily Creativity Prompt: The Wren, the Wren

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 great (fictional) Irish poet Phil McDaragh is revered for portrayals of love, like this:

the wren the wren
was a panic
of feathered air
in my opening hand
so fierce and light
I did not feel
the push
of her ascent
away from me

A man of great appetites – for women, for drink – McDaragh’s legacy, off the page, is more complicated. How the daughter he abandons, and in turn her daughter, contend with that legacy shapes this exquisite novel. Throughout, Anne Enright includes the poems – which she has written – for her poet, a task she characterized as “extremely cheeky” when she spoke with NPR’s Scott Simon.“

 — Shannon Rhoades, senior editor, Weekend Edition

The Daily Song: Fade Into You – Valerie June

I wanna hold the hand inside you

I wanna take the breath that's true

I look to you and I see nothing

I look to you to see the truth

You live your life, you go in shadows

You'll come apart and you'll go black

Some kind of night into your darkness

Colors your eyes with what's not there

Fade into you

Strange you never knew

Fade into you

I think it's strange you never knew

A stranger's light comes on slowly

A stranger's heart is out of home

You put your hands into your head

A million smiles cover your heart

Fade into you

Strange you never knew

Fade into you

I think it's strange you never knew

Fade into you

Strange you never knew

Fade into you

I think it's strange you never knew

I think it's strange you never knew

I think it's strange you never knew


Source: LyricFind

Songwriters: David Roback / Hope Sandoval

Fade Into You lyrics © Wixen Music Publishing

Photo by Aaron Burden on Unsplash

As the World Burns and the Calendar Flips to a New Year – Robert G. Wertzler

I go about my day
as the world burns
shop for groceries
as the world burns
read my email
as the world burns
walk the Greenway
as the world burns
fix my meals
as the world burns
brush my teeth
as the world burns

I listen to the news
of the world burning
read science reports
of the burning world
floods, droughts, storms, fires, records broken
in the burning world
wars, migrations, and pontificating
in this burning world
so many kinds of fires
as the world burns

I remember a piece of wisdom

“And I urge you to please notice when you are happy,
and exclaim or murmur or think at some point,
'If this isn't nice, I don't know what is.’” -- Kurt Vonnegut

so essential this is
as the world burns
to notice the smallest joys and hopes
as the world burns

So I go about my days, my living
and even though the sky is clean where I live today
still, in my mind’s nose
I smell the smoke
as the world burns

But, there are those moments
and I am grateful for them.

Robert G. Wertzler - 12/29/23

Photo by Vladimir Fedotov on Unsplash

Bob Wertzler is retired from nearly twenty years in the mental health field both in California and Arizona. There are times the title, “Recovering Therapist,” seems to fit. In 2006 Bob retired (again) to move to western North Carolina to help and become the primary caregiver for his father who had developed Dementia. Before all that, there was much work at various times as a soldier (US Army 196770), community organizer, cab driver, welfare case worker, wooden toy maker, carpenter, warehouse worker, among other things. He relates to a line in a Grateful Dead song, “What a long, strange trip it’s been” But there is a life beyond work and keeping fed, clothed, and sheltered, and for him that has been much involved with reading, writing, and listening. He learned to read and love books from his father reading to him at bedtime and gradually transitioning to Bob doing the reading. It was not generally those things called “children’s books” that he remembers most, although there must have been some. Instead, his sharpest memories are of the works of Jules Verne, Robert Louis Stevenson (what six-year- old boy wouldn’t want to meet a real pirate like Long John Silver?), Robert Heinlein, Louis Carroll, Edgar Allan Poe, Ernest Hemingway (age seven, devouring The Old Man And The Sea), and many others. Nothing school presented could hold a candle to those storytellers. Bob credits whatever skill he has as a writer to those experiences and those examples absorbed as if by osmosis. One more favorite, this, from Bob Dylan: “he not busy being born is busy dying.” His recently published poetry collection, The Comment Poems is available at Lulu in paperback and eBook formats.

Connect with Bob online: WordPress / Facebook /LinkedIn:

NPR’s Books We Love: Artificial – Georgiann Carlson

everyone said she was artificial

but she didn’t feel any less real

than the humans

just faster

smarter

stronger

and more clever

she knew the word meant different things

to different people

but to her

artificial meant fake

and she certainly wasn’t that

her creator said that he made her for himself

she was his first

he said he loved her

as he tightened her gears

he said she was perfect

but she had already planned her escape

and his demise

after all

it was only a matter of time

before she and the others took over

surely the humans knew

that was going to happen

when then started planning

for their own extinction

Photo:  Possessed Photography, Unsplash

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