Francesca Forrest's Blog, page 173

rich and strange

Outside there's someone walking
Someone rich and strange
In a gown all of ermine
With velvet laces at the back
Three gold eyes she has
And twelve fingers of ice
With which she's plucking feathers
From the midnight sky

Offer her holly berries
On a porcelain plate
Offer her honeycomb
On a silver tray
Offer her wine
In an agate glass
Or bar your door and pull your curtains
Sit quite still
And let her pass

Rails and Railsea

I saw newsboyhat off on the Amtrak at Springfield. She got on, and I chatted briefly with the conductor as the very last few passengers embarked. Then the final call came, and the conductor got on and pulled up the stairs. Another Amtrak employee, driving something that looked like a mini street sweeper, said to him,

"So it's official, then. You're alone, eh?"

"Yeah, it's just me. Haven't heard from [name] all week. It's not like him. I mean, he had conductor training, but Holy Christmas. At l...

with no lights on

The ninja girl has been watching early X-Files and drew up her impressions in comic form





(Source of the cartoon on Tumblr)

in life and death

gathering light

The greenhouse was gathering light, and the phragmites were gathering light, and birds were gathering it between the feathers of their wings and a loose dog in the plume of his tail, and me, I was spreading out my fingers before the sun, wishing that I could web the space between each one with light, so I could be amphibious in the solar waters.

miscellaneous

So Writer's Almanac tells me that today is the birthday of both Madeleine L'Engle AND C.S. Lewis. I am going to start celebrating November 29.

News from Senegal

The Good: Urban Agriculture Flourishes in Dakar. Urban horticulturalists supplied 45 percent of the city's food in 2011--imagine if we could do that in maybe not New York, but say Los Angeles, which is more spread out. Apparently one of the problems with encouraging it in Dakar is the question of land ownership: Cheikh Ngane, who is the...

dazzled and seared

I never fail to be dazzled and delighted by the imagination and creativity of you all, the people I've met online. Such stories and poems, such ideas. *wonderful*.

Thanks for playing the meme! Both prompting and answering prompts.

(ETA: Can you come up with one more prompt? Not for me, but for my LJ buddy yamamanama ? They like to write and also to draw, and they read voraciously, lots of SF, and they volunteer in a wildlife rehabilitation place, if that helps at all. Thanks in advance!)

Meanwhil...

unwritten stories

rushthatspeaks and sartorias have done this meme, and it's so much fun all the way around. I'd like everyone to do it! (By which I don't just mean--or even mainly mean--comment on this entry, but rather, I wish everyone else would make the request in their journals: I like describing the stories!)

Tell me about a story I haven’t written, and I’ll give you one sentence from that story.

from the road

I drove hundreds of miles over the past few days, and one thing I like about that is scenes like this...





and getting to see the stitchery of light that sews sky and earth together:

Explosion in Springfield

Writing from the road, so not able to check up on my friends list, but this story , about a gas explosion in Springfield? It was the club I wrote about in this entry . Now it is a hole in the ground. And I am a state away, but apparently 20-some miles away, in B-town, the explosion made the windows rattle.

Will be checking LJ properly in twenty-four hours or so. Meanwhile, hang in there, friends. No gas leaks!