Valentine Wish List VI: Vintage & Handmade Gifts

25 seed faces kelsey elise pike

antique 1930's remington monarch pioneer manual typewriter brooklyn retro

black concrete and stainless steel broken heart dr. craze

antique silver anatomical heart cabinet hardware blue bayer

pomegranate rose bath salts brooke marton

Writing Days: Place - February 10, 2012

February 10, 2012

Figment Daily Theme:
Through your writing, return to a place that was once significant to you that you've not visited for years. What is clear in your memory? What can't you quite remember? Where are the holes? Go to one of those holes and using what you can remember as clues, invent what might have been there.

In addition to Figment's prompt, recent news inspired this piece.

Place
Danna

February 10, 2012

Figment Daily Theme:
Through your writing, return to a place that was once significant to you that you've not visited for years. What is clear in your memory? What can't you quite remember? Where are the holes? Go to one of those holes and using what you can remember as clues, invent what might have been there.

Place
Danna

She stands on the uneven grass before her grandfather's grave and lays her flowers down. He was a man who was clear in his actions and affections. He didn't have much use for granddaughters. Or daughters.

Her daughter is playing among the dead, running between the headstones, careful not to step on the graves, as instructed. She is pretending to read the engraved words and says goodbye to each as she runs. People gathered in small groups smile as she skips past them.

The woman small talks about her iris bouquets and the heat, until she realizes she no longer hears her daughter's singsonging. Time freezes and a small fist pounds inside her ears. She sees the blond halo of her daughter's head and her breath returns. Her daughter is standing silent and completely still twenty feet from her.

Her daughter turns, a serious expression on her small face. Momma, come here.

The woman calls to her daughter to come back, but her daughter is resolute in her demand her mother come to her. She is ready to join in the game until she recognizes the name on the headstone. Her daughter is standing before the grave of Mr. Schoenfield.

Momma, come here. He wants to say hello.

Something close to a scream rumbles through her and she rushes to her daughter, grabs her up, and hurries to the car. Her daughter screams, I want to go back! I don't want to go!

Quiet, she says.

Once inside, she turns the air conditioning on high, and hides her furious tears behind sunglasses. Her hands grip and release the steering wheel.

I don't want to go! I don't want to go! her daughter screams and bucks against her car seat.

The woman thinks to drive to a nearby store and buy a knife, return when the crowds have left for their Memorial Day family picnics. She will leave her child with the sitter and come back and tear the grass over his grave to shreds as warning to stay away from her child.

She is sorry that Mrs. Schoenfield must spend eternity in the ground next to this man.

Valentine Wish List V: Vintage & Handmade Gifts

skimming stars fréya eté

silver monogram bracelet silk wrap bracelet licky drake

pomegranate and white tea cleansing scrub ayelet naturals

usa road atlas covered wood chair karin newyorkorganize.com

typewriter in pink clutch bag daphne from belgium

Writing Days: Syllable - February 9, 2012

Feb. 9, 2012

Figment Daily Theme:
This is a prompt I love to use when I first meet a new class. I tell them to take out their pens and write me a piece--the theme is up to them. It need not be long. But it needs to be a real scene. And the sole rule that frames what they write is this: You may not use a word with more than one syllable. It sounds hard, but "syllable" is the lone word used here that has more than one.

Syllable
Danna

You want my heart. You say it should be yours. My heart is mine. It is not yours.
You say you will die if I keep my heart. I say die.
You say I have no heart. I have a heart. It is mine. It is not yours.
You say I can not see your pain. I have eyes. They see. But they are mine. They are not yours.
You say I am stone. Yes. Yes, I am stone. I am like Mu.

Mu is mute, a place of gold and stone. Close the lips. Close the eyes. This is Mu. Mu floats in the mind of the past. Mu is old. Is Greek. Is root.

I say, this day, close your lips, be mute, close your eyes, float.
Forget your past, forget my heart, my eyes, me. Cut your roots, be stone, but not gold. Be old, but not Mu.

No, never Mu. I am Mu.

Artist of the Day: Yearbook Grace - Tabatha Brown

Yearbook Grace Tabitha Brown thepairabirds.etsy.com

Chicago-based illustrator Tabatha Brown's yearbook portrait series are the perfect mix of modern and retro.

Artist Bio:
The Pairabirds is the little studio of illustrator Tabitha Bianca Brown
- Reinterpreting classic soul and modern minimalism.
-BFA in Illustration from the American Academy of Art, in Chicago.

::Where to Follow::
http://coverthatmother.blogspot.com
http://flickr.com/photos/thepairabirds/
http://twitter.com/thepairabirds

::Featured On::
Urban Outfitters Blog
ModCloth Blog
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Then and Now
Precious Style
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Delicious Things
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Indie Parade Blog
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Modish
Design This Design That
Roadside Scholar
Afrolicious

Poem Therapy 9:15 February 8, 2012: Syrian Poets Adonis - Aicha Arnaout - Nizar Qabbani

The Edge of the World [excerpt]
Adonis

I release the earth and I imprison the skies. I fall down in order to stay faithful to the light, in order to make the world ambiguous, fascinating, changeable, dangerous, in order to announce the steps beyond.
The blood of the gods is still fresh on my clothes. A seagull's scream echoes
through my pages. Let me just pack up my words and leave.



The Fountain
Aïcha Arnaout
translated Cécile Oumhani

When the inscrutable
embraces sluggish time
spreading its invisible light between two suspended shores
rags of screams, a flight of black cloth
spread a hollow vertigo
down the native alley

Sanctuaries in ruins, fathomless crypts,
sepulchres with no remains merge
above a beaded sheet
wrapped around the earth’s flank

The eye of silence peers
and sinks into the snowed-up scene
tears it up like a lightning-blade
digs the earth to the bone
a grave for the wandering woman


Barad
Nizar Qabbani

Barada, oh father of all rivers
Oh, horse that races the days
Be, in our sad history, a prophet
Who receives inspiration from his lord
Millions acknowledge you as an Arab
Prince . . . so pray as an imam

Oh eyes of the gazelle in the desert of Sham
Look down. This is the age of lavender
They have detained you in the pavilions for a long time
We have woven tents from tears
God has witnessed that we have broken no promise
Or secured protection for those we love


The news tonight on link tv from Syria is beyond comprehension. Snipers on the rooftops shooting children. Tanks in residential neighborhoods leveling homes. Armed men going house to house killing entire families.

This is not the first time the world has witnessed such atrocities.

Like father, like son.

Tyrants fall. They always do, but the cost in the interim is too high in human lives and spirit.

Would that the tyrant and his minions fall quickly.

Valentine Wish List IV: Vintage & Handmade Gifts

turquoise pomegranate earrings gaye doser

cream & sugar set with tray barb campbell

paris mapcut on white karen o'leary

let them stay cushion cath of my bearded cushion

monster ingrith catherine zacchino