creek, spoon, number, lightning. + next week's words.

When you think of the brain as a collection of tiny storms, do you ever wonder how climates are changing up there inside our skulls?

We had some gorgeous, some surprising, & some silly submissions this week. Hurrah! Please, keep 'em coming!


fill my head with creek
drown words                       (creek)


walking to the sound of creek
I miss my sarong falling
silently to the ground                    (creek)


the wet moat body
that once did not chase its own tail        (creek)


I saw an alligator
they shot it                 (creek)


the perpetual robes of the plum goddess
at once rise, bloom, decay and drop              (creek)


fire has mercy on the red dog's bridge         (creek)


Just a jump
and swing
and a hope for no water          (creek)


my round face
mooned into a metal sky             (spoon)


sound of fiddle in the flooded road     (spoon)


Bosphorus of throat     (spoon)


spoon, spoon
spoonspoonspoonspoon
spoon                                  (yep, you guessed it)


if math is God
numbers are Jesus
and 23 is the sermon on the mount       (number)


the exhausted catalog
of star catching
on my favorite night         (number)


piano cemented to the floor, drunken children
dinging upon it as if it were a telephone                     (number)


metal arm jerking green into the dance           (lightning)


hot pin prick
tattoo of a sponge in the petrified earth         (lightning)


atmospheric candle
constantly flickering off.             (lightning)


heads of diamond ache easy            (lightning)


One poet sent us a poem that makes use of all four words:


Creek, heavy with sleep,
a tongue tied spoon at the end of her limb,
she tries to number the badlands.

Let it be

late night lightning.


We're itching to see more of your work. & your friends' creations too. If you've submitted but haven't seen your poems up yet, keep writing & keep sending! A new dictionary ain't like the OED--it needs a near-infinite number of contributors, so please share this blog.

For next week, we eagerly await your explorations of

dance        honey        blood        rule

Send poems to inkandfamine@gmail.com! & offer suggestions for words in the comment section.

Happy August,

Ink and Famine

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