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