coal, blue, neck, glow. + next week's words.

Dear Poets,

Both of us spend too much time missing writing--hurting unnecessarily seems both silly and perversely easy. When we show up here, we are coming back, shoring ourselves up, making ourselves well, moving our linguistic salt & pepper shakers around like The Girl With the Silver Eyes and trying to feel, again, like a breadbox full of numinous maracas. This week, that happened on Tuesday instead of Monday.

Stuff we loved from last week:


the burden in my belly that shines around my eyes     (coal)


she swathes her clothes around them
burnt biscuits on a minstrel's crown        (coal)


miners trapped, blotted, erased in the night
for fifty more years                                               (coal)


exhibit A for the type A: alchemical cliché      (coal)


the tone in my voice
when you turn away and leave          (blue)


the only colour of emotion you can sing              (blue)


loneliness folds itself into an origami penguin
and secrets itself into some little pocket inside          (blue)


a little rain must fall to feed the kudzu
or whatever else will take that damn house     (blue)


turned down under marble sky
warmth above the sheets
a serving spot for blessings                    (neck)


The last bowl to hold your kiss       (neck)


naked as my want, your stem       (neck)


a keyhole in the forest
or an alley
the light that moves your feet            (glow)


the face of a mother
beneath a stern lover's hand         (glow)


light between the liars' trees (glow {after Susan Briante})


So next week, we're drawing a creek and making it run. Please send your tiny poems of seven lines or less (to inkandfamine@gmail.com) on/ redefining these words:

creek             spoon          number          lightning   

And please leave us your comments & word suggestions here!

Love is it--

Ink and Famine 

Novel, button, broomstick, cave + next week's words

Hello, hello, fellow poets and word admirers.  It's been another week and we have just a few more words to add to our new dictionary...redefining the world, one word at a time.  It's risky business.  Just look at how words affect the world around us...to see the world differently with the addition of an adjective.  To hear voices once quelled speaking out in the darkness, loud and clear.  The first understandable warbles from an infant's lips.  More lethal than the tip of the sword, the pen has always carried its own weight in the world.  Here are just a few samples of how we can see everyday objects in a new form, giving them a new voice:

bone tired desert
crooked spine
held by a hand beneath the tents
beneath the sheets
vowels & consonants falling thru fingers
like bits of black sand       (novel)

refusal to believe in time      (novel)

canopic jar   (novel)


door to secrets of the flesh   (button)

eight pupils of red thread
eight different ways to see a spell-
voodoo vision   (button)


greatest treasure of my tomb  (button)

pink dishes from a tea set
all up and down her belly  (button)

jumped over for love
gripped tightly for dust
smooth & thigh worn from flying over cityscapes  (broomstick)

not the only thing I'll put between my legs  (broomstick)

the tortured death
of the man who ate other men   (broomstick)


dark echo of the body   (cave)

barbaric yawp
of earth to ocean
hungry for salt water and sea urchins  (cave)

finger painted womb   (cave)

the city of your final destination  (cave)

empty, silly thing that shines when introduced out of the darkness   (cave)

And that's it for last week!  This week we have:

coal      blue      neck      glow

Please submit your poems of seven lines or less to inkandfamine@gmail.com.  We look forward to your submissions. Spread the word and leave a comment with suggestions for new words!



This is Ink&Famine signing off!

Miracle, Root, Saffron, Immigrant + Next Week's Words & Your Suggestions.

Hello again, poets! And so here we are again,  another week, another batch of words redefined and seen anew.  We hope you enjoy what we have in store for you and that you will continue to work with us on these definitions.  Without further ado.....

water falling all ten ways at once   (miracle)

the meeting of juice
and rind
tiny cathedral
open for the first time   (miracle)

the scent of you
a moon climbing my legs   (saffron)

taste of sunset
fleshed out in a beggar's bowl of rice   (saffron)

man thing
earth encrusted
prickled at the taste of rain    (root)

we reach pretty far to drink
even if we've always lived here   (root)

the one picture they have of us
we're not even in                          (root)

she who knows the moon upside-down
whistles a tune no one else can hear      (immigrant)

your thumb on my belly
traveling between knee-cap and nipple
hot breath on the back of your hand        (immigrant)


Don't forget to leave suggestions in the comments for future words to explore.  This week's picks are:

novel      button       broomstick       cave

See you next week, our imagimagnificent word folk!  And don't forget to submit your rhymes to inkandfamine@gmail.com.

Commas and semicolons,

Ink&Famine

Week Four: silence, shell, lily, road. Next week's words. And an invitation!

Poets, you're knocking us out. Here's a little sample of what you did with the words we posted last week:

the sound of hearts beating

when

words have failed.                     (silence)

Crumbled monuments of a time

remembered only in songs

now long gone unsung.                                   (silence)

the spaces of thought, between action.

the clearness of day between rain,

the angst of uneasiness                                 (silence)

The egg of air
between warm body
and wing-                                     (silence)

died on Thursday found on Tuesday
outside the circle of your old, ragged dance                                                                             (silence)

 

 

the hare who dips
the tips of his ears
in your winecup                             (silence)

 

 

a cicada song
crystallized on the trunk of the acacia tree-            (shell)

blue egg of the ancestral boat:
let's go home, you say
to the woman in the dream,
and sweep into your own ear.                           (shell)

Lady with her head bowed
singing you to her with her scent-             (lily)

pocket guide to a cloying romance                          (lily)

a dark sonnet
punctuated with headlights and weeds-            (road)

some nights: woods outside your door.
on others, a train, a room of winds and no sleep.                (road)

 

 

Thanks, all, for sending your stuff! Please, if you haven't seen your poems/ redefinitions here yet, keep sending! If you have, please send more! Send all poems to inkandfamine@gmail.com.

 

& if you're moved to do so, we'd love it if you'd leave us a comment with your own word suggestions.

 

Words for next week:

 

miracle      saffron      root      immigrant

 

Hasta,

 

Ink and Famine