Ink and Famine is back! Why start again today? Because this is the only 12/12/12 we get. So!: gate, photograph, grave, tongue. & four new words.

"Clap your own damn hands." --Doug Cox

What a year--a veritable saga of love, work, dancing, school, Internet Cat Video Film Festivals and potted meat products (well, not that last one). Was it a big year for you, too?

After recovering from various funk-dancing injuries, we here at Ink and Famine are back and rarin' to go! 12/12/12 seems like an ideal date for a resurrection; given our culture's tendency toward date-specific hysteria, we'd like to offer our own small antidote in the form of this new beginning.

Many thanks to those poets who submitted to us last winter and have been waiting this whole time to see the gate * photograph * grave * tongue post go up!

And now for the poems.


washing on the line
a maze of possibilities                                           (gate)


wood on bonehinge
keeping mother out                      (gate)


arc of cicadas
Janus crown                        (gate)


innocence surprised
as a paper skeleton              (photograph)


I once had
a clean pair of eyes                            (photograph)


graven images of seven caravans
a theft of arrivals
star watchers smiling                                       (photograph)


the porch wind chimes
forever singing "A"                 (photograph)


tree shadows on granite
always on a hill
with a view                                   (grave)


without grit
or bone
fertile inverted island              (grave)


Átropos shielding the sun from her eyes
as she waits with her shears                          (grave)


six small stones
for Abigail                                       (grave)


all we make that makes us
like elephants                              (grave)


"the wallpaper"
"yes" it replied                                       (tongue)


Madagascar fin               (tongue)


full pocket of quarters
at the all-you-can-drink milk stand                 (tongue)

And a couple of lovely poems inspired by all four words:

we await the moon, arms of trees

nothing separates us locked or broken

frames, metal or  limbs lean in and over

turquoise under inking blue me on my feet under you

a wall swings gaily us driving through

sad separation old as hills and onyx piled to still the posts

even they, we are:

 

foxes, flowers, the oak and gold

her face a gate unlocked

Helen, if I had a photograph

biting her pen cap fumbling in

her grave purse for the

petitioner’s proper tongue 

thank goddess I said yes

 Words for our next round are:

resin   *   hatchet   *   suitcase   *   stalk

Want to participate? Send your poems, inspired by and/or redefining these words, plus any suggestions for words you'd like to add to our growing, collaborative poets' lexicon, to inkandfamine@gmail.com. Remember, all submissions are anonymous, and prone to be shared as widely as possible.

Welcome back. Peace in 2012!

Your friends at 

Ink and Famine