carapace, mandrake, caravan, apothecary... & the next round of words.

Something about the approach of a darker season, perhaps, made this a particularly juicy group of words for our contributing poets. The air grows thick with woodsmoke and unnameable spice; in some subterranean alchemical laboratory, muttering homunculi wave their gnarled hands over the cauldron of our thoughts: 

I lay up in the canopy of your belly
my pink toes against your soft liver
rabbit eyes be damned
I have made my home in a turtle whale       (carapace)

mildewed shame carried

in my body's every dark

and secret cell.                   (carapace)

tarnished heart turned inside-out      (carapace)

leave the last lines of the play unspoken         (carapace)

no matter my coffee stain on your bone
or the heaviness of my stew in your bowels-
you still won't love me                                   (mandrake)

 

 

silver on a lady's finger
crooked at the bone
salting a meal                    (mandrake)

keening of wasted lust
in a white basin                     (mandrake)

gallows root
sends up a shriek for the murdered
for the innocent man                            (mandrake)

a reckless train rams

anger against intellect

into endlessness                  (caravan)

pile of ant legs
and no bulbous middle parts
all rolled away with the pebbles on a white beach       (caravan)

finding the same smile in three generations of women
the wagon wheels pull
woven silks drop

"you will spit sour from the mouth at the birth of your sons -
but one sweet spittle, save for your girl child"                         (caravan)

the cartomancy d'une nuit blanche
tells you it's unlucky
to travel by boat                                  (caravan)

your beat
my beat
where the heart meats mix        (apothecary)

I shave my bone to spell you
to mix with the mandrake,
readying my chains
& toothed key                              (apothecary)

The severed plant will produce another flower.
Mullein, mugwort, mandrake and myrtle,
you are burned as a witch
in some other world. You are Keats,
sniffing out your own medicine.                (apothecary)

 

Man, do we love it when you use all four words in a single poem, recasting not just each word, but the group as a whole:

Sculpt an apothecary

from the blood of carapaced

immigrants. Hide the mandrake,

laudanum and sea urchin spines

from their caravan of pain.                 (all)

Frisson-o-rama. Many thanks to all who sent poems! Please, keep 'em coming. Tell your friends. This is fun.

 

Since we find time to post every couple of weeks or so--when it feels just right, & when we have enough time and submissions--we'd do better to call this the next round o' words, rather than next week's words:

innocence         snake         book         tremor
 

Leave a comment below to offer up your suggestions for words to explore!

 

Until we meet again--

Ink & Famine

matchstick, tower, sacred, volcano + next week's words

It’s been quite the end to summer! Hurricanes, caravaning cross country, getting lost in the deserts and forests that surround us; looks like we set down our hatbox of undefined words and took to the air, feeling the feathers pull from our hide.  A much needed apology for allowing a longer than desired hiatus, but the mind is often in need of the intake of new air before it is allowed to spout out new words.  And with that, here is what we pulled down out of the ether...

Your love, a sacred volcano
towering in this old heart
like matchstick voodoo.    (all inclusive!)

letting go of the statue’s hand

a ring of ash whispered into your palm     (matchstick)

young slave watering the gardens of
Babylon, city of closed arms                (matchstick)

when little flame

stilted her house

to keep the waves away            (matchstick)

that single, delicate hair on your hardening nipple         (matchstick)

 

anyone who really looks you in the eye
is beautiful               (matchstick)


Vanzetti said
                       I am innocent
and sat down in the deathchair             (matchstick)

the god
needing something
stands up                  (tower)

the watch point

the base keep

where my hair is all locked up                  (tower)

edifice built of countless scraps of paper
covered in words borrowed from unheard songs       (tower)

 

prism of your plasma

wanting to flow into mine

juices together

pulpy, sweet          (tower)

soul, don't go
one face turns to another so seamlessly
identity drops like a silk dress          (tower)


listening to a heartbreak song
with one you plead silent
not to break your heart            (tower)

a coin taken from a well

your wish in my pocket         (sacred)

everywhere you step
someone's bed
someone's altar       (sacred)

some stranger's breath stirs my dust      (sacred)

 

tears from Guadalupe

around my neck

one clear word

strung after another            (sacred)

the composer says goodbye to his earthly body
with two hands
the painter with one            (sacred)


what flows between the me
in the bed and the me traveling
in pictures of grief            (sacred)


from branch to brick, this town
is made of women
women's souls hush this place and keep
what water is left
running uphill               (sacred)
 

you still drink the explosion       (volcano)

natural bad luck
a peacock feather's eye on the wall         (volcano)

red birds rise toward home        (volcano)

her ruby lips

blow you down

there’s that “L” word again         (volcano)


long demon tongue
lapping hard at the wet sky        (volcano)

smear of ash
on a dignitary's tablecloth              (volcano)

We hope that these words find you well with the earth cooling off, the scent of soil and changing leaves promising the turn of the season.  If you would so please, we would love to hear how you would define-

carapace    mandrake     caravan       apothecary

Please submit your poems to inkandfamine@gmail.com.  And if you have any suggestions for words you would like to see redefined, please post them in the comments down below.  See everybody next week!

Yours in sonnets, haiku & even a little bit of iambic pentameter:

Ink&Famine