Literature DDs for December 2011

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December's Literature Daily Deviations



Hello all! This is an article showcasing the deviations from the Literature gallery that were featured as Daily Deviations throughout the past month. So, without further ado...the features!

Featured by BeccaJS



Street Corner DrowningI drowned her in her own regrets and moved her off my street corner. She didn't belong there, like that little turquoise car Matty once bought used.  Yeah, it ran great and had power windows.  But, it didn't fit. It was an eyesore on the curbed canvas of our street's patina.
That's what she was: an eyesore.  She never wore her feelings on her sleeve because they restricted her range of motion, she said.  And I wondered what she thought she wouldn't need stiff elbows for on this block.
When the dawn would break in such a fashion that light actually streamed, she should have glittered with the fine sheen of mistakes she'd made. But she was muted by the powders and makeup she used to deny herself that very sparkle.  She saw perfection in that facade, but on our street it was considered sin to never let the neighbors see your underwear on the washline or the late rent notice on your door.
She'd been around too long already for the liking of
Ginsberg in the ParkAnd now I’m that little lame balloonman,
all knobbled feet and goat face.
I twist balloon animals from discarded condoms to make
a Durex poodle and a Trojan horse.
I offer them freely, hoping for nothing
more than a smile to steal, but no
one smiles anymore.
I steel at autumn, the winter-come-lately,
and lounge stiff against a light-and-ice pole.
I see him there, Ginsberg, shivering man of rags, and he
leers the old man at the chessboard, the one playing with no partner,
the one tasting the king and swallowing a pawn.
Who is waiting for whom, I wonder?
They both look hungry.
I startle as the Great Figure rolls a quiet, ruby line by.
The emergency is over or not yet begun.
In the humdrum silence of the crisp air,
I tell secrets and secrets.
To the expectant ducks I give away
the last of you, the little bits held between youandme
that I have no place for in myself.
I speak your secrets like an ancient religion,
something beautiful and forgotten. I say to the trees
how you told me yo
:thumb161869477: The Long Tide by timeraider Questions I Never Asked My GrandfatherMy grandfather sits in a wheelchair by the window in the old people's home with his chin leaned into his chest, mumbling incessantly and unintelligibly to himself and drooling a little from the right corner of his mouth. Mom can't come here anymore. She just breaks down at the sight of him so I sometimes come by myself and sit with him in silence for a while.
It's a sad end to a long and hard life, and I morbidly think to myself that if a political party stepped forth now with the legalization of euthanasia on its agenda, I'd vote for it. After two strokes and a hemorrhage, topped with severe senile dementia, what is the point of letting people exist like robots? I know grandpa thought the same. Before his speech was impaired, he often said that the pacemaker was one of his biggest mistakes, and that people should be allowed to go when it was time to go.
Terrible as it sounds, I'm already starting to think about the obituary that I, having the best way with words in my branch of the fa
The HeistShelley lined up the shot. She regulated her breathing and made sure her footing was solid. She ignored the sounds and other distractions around her. It was just her and her lucky 5-iron.
She pictured the shot and took it. The ankle-biter was torn free of Hugo's pant leg and flew squealing in fury through the air. Even though it was dark, Shelley shaded her eyes and squinted, watching until the little beast was gone.
"Jesus Christ, Shelley!" Hugo screamed. "Did you have to take that long?" He was already crouched down and inspecting his leg for damage.
"Yes," Shelley said simply. She twirled her 5-iron and propped it casually on her shoulder. "You just can't take a shot that isn't right."
Hugo tried tucking his pants into his boots for the umpteenth time but they were too shredded to stay. "I fucking hate those things," he muttered.
"It's a good thing you got me and Daisy, then." Shelley grinned.
Hugo glowered at her and stood back up. They'd argued more than once over why they were to
RegularsJon and Carol came in as they do
every day
she clutching a bit of cloth to
her face and being unable
to give me an honest look and
Jon being overly enthusiastic about
his coming meal
(I am a goddess because I
bring them food.)
They met each
other outside the bathroom,
gazed across the table with a fifty
year old expression
and the only emotion I have
ever heard in Carol's
ancient, cracking voice
is when she calls him baby
Repeatedly I wonder, if or when
I give up my mind
to age and black eyes,
will we do this? Drink tea
with too much sugar
and have a waitress that will
be overly concerned if we
don't show our wrinkled mugs?
I prepared bags of fruit for
smoothies and watched her
spill beans and rice all
over the checkered floor-
he told her to tell us
about the mess that was made
in a vaguely apologetic
tone. She instead
asked for more vegetables
and said the
Malawisaurus
fucked it all up.
Jon told me
I'm his favorite because
I smile like a porn star or
born star- his uncertainty
of eit
As yet, untitledI swept out the corners of my mind today
In short shallow strokes
Not knowing if the dust disturbed my life
Or if my life disturbed the dust.
:thumb272957955: Lady DepressionI am getting fat and complacent.
I sup on the riches of your labour and
spit the bones back in your face.
You are not worthy of anything.
You are a fly buzzing in my ear,
neither here nor there.
I can fell you with one slap,
end you with one loud clap
of my hands together and you fall,
like a marionette puppet whose
strings have been cut.
Pitiful thing.
You are easily killed.
I think I'll play with you a little more.
She's half a step from me1994-i
"Call me Harry," she said.  "Boys can get away with anything."
2010
I was playing with matches.  Letting the flame lick and dance and gutter in the wind.  Letting it almost touch the paint on my front door.  Daring it to peel away.
The heat from the tiny flame was scratching at the tip of my thumb and I wondered, could I absorb it?  If I let it burn a little further down the match, will the fire rush in and fill the dark and cold space that is me?
1999
Love-making over, she rested her head on my shoulder and whispered into my neck.  As I was falling asleep she breathed "I will always come back to you."
1996
That was the year the bright blue paint on my front door started to fade.  I told Harriett that if my father was still around, he would repaint it.  She said that if my mother was still around, she'd tell me to get off my lazy ass and do it myself.
I laughed at that; Ha
A Christmas SurpriseA Christmas Surprise
A single snowflake fell lazily and lit on my nose; settled in the crook between the tip and the trophy bump I have from when I broke my nose as a child. I crinkled my nose and shook, but stopped as I remembered. Sara says I look like a cute little bunny when I do that, and I turn a severe shade of red every time, so I try to catch myself when I can, keep my cheeks from the rosy blush she loves to laugh about. I shook one more time, sniffed a little, and smiled to myself. I slammed the car door shut and looked down the quaint, snow-covered cul-de-sac. I chuckled and kept smiling; this was the perfect Christmas. I had been abroad all first semester and Sara hadn't expected me back until after New Years, but I decided to surprise her for Christmas and caught an earlier flight. I felt inside the right pocket of my wool coat, comforting myself that it was still there. It had been two years, four months, and eight days since we started dating. Over two years, and we had
in praise of scavengersOh, those crows,
perceptive and wise and with a sense of time and season.
They know how emotional humans get
when Christmas comes.
What suckers they are for feeding the birds,
an act of love when they can give no love to others
The crows settle in apartment block parking lots
the way seagulls gather in shopping strips
next to fast food joints
or hover and flap in masses
on the scrapheaps of garbage scows
sent from the city
with the dregs of living
Origin of the SistersIn the land of Tavos stands a hill, and set into its side is the door to a secret prison.  Only this door stands between the physical realm and its destruction, for the prison was constructed not to contain men but an ancient evil.  Its name is Hunger, and it cannot be held by mere bars or chains.
It was the Flame, the great Flame that burns behind the sky and lights every star, that cast Hunger to the ground and locked it away from the rest of the world.  But this was not enough; he knew that the evil being was not without allies in this world or any other, for many lusted after its power.  Therefore the Flame set the men he had placed in Tavos as a guard to ward off any such enemy.  He gave to them flaming brands and bronze weapons to arm themselves along with a warning to never open the door.  These men made their towers around the foot of the hill where they kept vigil day and night, and Tavos entered into a time of peace.



Featured by Halatia



Fishbowlborrowing,
we breathe like
navy stripes on rice paper
and life for us is only
canary sidewalks and
shorelines like the
soft soft curve of
your parted lips,
but a gentle storm
is still a storm, and
this we know well.
and what do you think we are made out of,
star-flesh and street dust,
molded slowly into
spidery eyelashes and glowing
storm-freckles
and knuckles like crushed roses--
art is a human thing
even when you crumple
into the plush carpet
to lie for days
and days and
days.
[do not forget the things i tell you,
liquid whispers on harsh nights--]
we pluck nerves like
tulips in a sensory garden,
only for play and
never for work--daylight
is an unwound tendon
wrapped tight around
wide wide dream eyes,
glassy and knowing
like the whole ocean in a fishbowl;
i tell you for the last time,
i love you.
Caught DrowningFirst I notice her hair: dark and longer than any girl I've met, pulled back in a high ponytail and still past her waist. Since I'm following the line of her hair, I see her hips next, round and smooth like a bright red apple, picked fresh and rubbed against t-shirts, ready for biting. Attached there and growing like slender trunks from her hemline are two long, smooth legs. She smells like green grass and old wood.
We exchange the normal pleasantries. She is subtle and graceful; demure and polite. She speaks like an orchestra, her tones long and smooth, but there's a hiss there, like steam from a radiator. It works for her, and I've never done this before.
She laughs at that, a sound like a sour note that tugs somewhere at my stomach. "Exotic," I say; and she laughs at that too.
I realize she's waiting for a sign, so I imagine a flare between my lips and blow it out, a slow exhale. I wobble in the breath, but she catches me with her eyes. Black eyes, I notice, all the way through, but
free verse poetryif you ask to see my god,
i will show you the trees;
like ancient grandfathers ,
bark and tree trunk removed
in time over sea-spells of
rain and mist and fog;
if you ask to see my prayers,
i will show you the rivers;
drenched in cool veins of the
deer and stag antler, broken
bridges in masses over which
muddy feet run;
if you ask to hear my psalms,
i will sing to you the songs of the birds;
in a voicebox similar to the
bruja who lives in the forest -
old and sacred, screaming to
the sky for wishes and bottles
full of messages;
and if there lives children in
the river rocks, their hair combed
of algae, faces wet with paint from
dirt and fish,
they sleep in her arms like homeless drunkards, sick from daylight.
if you ask to meet my teacher,
i will ask you to speak to the earth;
and sing like the bears at night who
wear deerskin and coyote skulls, brushing
the sky of stars and
building the moon.
Perfect ContritionIn a proper Catholic church, everything echoes. Any sound uttered within the building bounces of the floor and the walls and the high, vaulted ceilings, so much so that I imagine that they could easily reach the ears of God himself. It's a rather poetic thought, the voices of mere mortals ringing towards Heaven with the help of good acoustics, but that thought's tempered by the fact that it includes every single noise: the coughs of emphysemic old men, the rustling of an impatient young girl's dress, and the taps of even the softest rubber-soled sneakers are no exception. On rainy days like this one, those shoes tend to squeak, which probably hurts God's ears as much as it does mine. If I didn't feel like I had to be here today, the noise would be enough to drive me out the heavy double doors.
I didn't make it in time for Mass—and I honestly wasn't in a rush for it anyway—so the church is mostly empty save for the few waiting in line for the confessional. This church h
Harvest MoonYou remind me of the harvest moon
tugging the shore from beneath my feet, of
rowing out to sea in winter with empty nets
till spring, of catching every breath
in crystals on the same forgotten docks,
Where gravity knots my tendons into rope,
my teeth into chalk and ash, and my eyes
into searchlights scanning the horizon
for the first ship that leads to you.
:thumb272367524: A Constellation of Scarsonly long-term lovers take the time
to ponder the origins of marks on skin
the first thing I notice are her scars:
she's a wandering tomboy
with more cuts and scrapes
than a hardbody Buick in an action film
but she's never been broken
I chart them as she sleeps so I can write poems later
these fingertips can still recall them
the way surgeons never have nightmares
about patients they save
but they're haunted by the faces they lost
she says she wears her scars like a constellation
I chart them like Galileo
trying to map her ancestry
circumnavigating her body as if Magellan
hired me as helmsman
and only I can get us safely home
every scar has a story
the way men who ink themselves
on every square inch
from big toe to eyebrow
can name the tattoo artist
and heartbreak behind each symbol
if she let you close enough to nap with an ear on her chest
you could hear the heartbreaking discord
as her mother's violin and father's oboe
played so selfishly
they forgot they had a daughter in the orche

Mature Content

:thumb148888990: Uncle Tom's CabinFor those of us who grew up on Evansdale Street, Uncle Tom's Cabin had a double meaning: first, it was a book on every parent's bookshelf that was both a regret and a reminder, and second, it was that ugly old shack that stood (well, sort of stood) at the end of Evansdale Street, where Brookwood's residential area finally gave into the woods. The older kids would spread the legend that the shack once belonged to an old fisherman named Tom, and that we were allowed in it every day of the year except September 1st, because that was Tom's niece's birthday and we had to leave them the house so their ghosts could celebrate.
Aside from that, Uncle Tom's Cabin was our hangout year-round:
In the winter, the shack became a research facility that managed to switch locations from the North to the South Pole daily while the ten of us waddled through knee-deep snow to search for Yeti and polar bears and dancing penguins.
In the spring, it was a king's castle we defended against dragons that looked
11 3i've been sitting under
the same tree for days and now
the leaves are leaving and now
the bark is peeling and
is this what they talk about
when the sparks all flicker
out?
i've been stoned enough
times to be called a martyr and
my mind's been getting hazy
lately
how do they expect me to answer
all these prayers?
i'm not a saint, i've just got
no grasp on sin.
:thumb216207192::thumb171629549::thumb175127048: bornetomorrow we'll set
paper airplanes adrift
over the muddy pacific,
the place where it starts
behind stanley park.
i know the ocean wasn't
really born there, i know it
comes from a bigger womb,
but it feels that way to me,
sometimes.  
that edge there
where water and foam
smash hopelessly against sand,
that feels like creation.
Footnote To The ApocalypseThe day after the apocalypse, I read.
I find a bookshop, one of the only buildings that hasn't been destroyed by the blast.  The door is locked, but the front window has a hole in it , and my shirt-wrapped fingers manage to break away enough of the splinters to create some sort of entrance. For the first time in my life, I am thankful for being small.
My hands are bleeding when I get inside. My shoulder is too - there's a sliver of glass buried in it too deep to dig out - and the gashes on my chest have opened up again, but there isn't much I can do about those. I don't want to bleed on the books, that's all.
I don't have any bandages, so I cut up the rest of my sleeves and wrap my fingers in the fabric: not perfect, but it will stop the worst of the staining. Then, I hunt.
It isn't a targeted pursuit - I'm after anything that's unburned, unbroken, and with all the pages intact - but somehow a pattern starts to emerge in the pile I make under the kneehole of the desk (animal
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Featured by ikazon



Morning - for Carl SandburgThe morning erupts
          on little cat feet
A flick of the tail
          a breath exhaled
               too fast at the end of a leap
and then
A paw,
     placed on lid's soft fan of lash
breath whirring, throaty, warm
          nose
             to
          nose
eyes still closed
Then          open
Thwack –
A stunning velvet attack
     innocent lids           unwarned
     warm sheets      no safe haven
The morning erupts
 
nowhere elseit rains hard enough
that i can finally sit quietly,
as if lighting candles.
maybe there is
nowhere else to be.
a cup of water trembles
on the table as if afraid,
kept too long
from the useful yearning of roots,
from the anonymous way rain falls.
i light one candle
then another,
quietly,
as if lighting candles.
the rain keeps pressing damp invisible flowers
against the window,
reminding me how long the near-dark lasts,
how the woods at the edge of the yard
never see,
but thirst enough to catch fire.
each candle moves like the rain,
each quieting life
from lives of their own.
in the half-light coming in,
i can pretend it's morning.
i can sit back,
pool on the chair like water,
somehow assured--
the rain will take all night,
beginning.
outside, the trees seem to look around
through the rain,
swaying
as if trying to see around each other.
their lives are as quiet and long
as the beginning of a rain.
this is the way life is,
filling with other lives:
just feeling water
enter the gro
for her.it's midnight and I'm writing love letters
on my skin to the woman who raised me. it's midnight
and every limb has a story. all
my collarbone remembers is the frantic
hurry of your footsteps when it broke under the weight
of gravity and mistaken desire to fly and my
broken pink umbrella, long-gone, remembers too. my elbows
remember the firm pull of your hands in the grocery
store. my cheeks remember your makeup and
my clumsy fingers dipping in like paint pots and my neck
remembers all your strands of pearls. I remember
when you were young again and wearing
red and holding cups of tea in hands
that didn't shake yet and I remember hands that knew how
to peel apples, curling skins like red ribbons over
the edge of the blade, confident
in motion, and I remember your voice and I remember
your songs and I remember.
it's midnight and the water is cold and I
am somewhere beyond feeling. but
my love letters are only ink and they are washing
away and I watch them swirl at my feet and I
want you
To shoreI think back to pulling your hair
from your face,
sticky strands in nut brown,
your lips like the frothy head
in a pint glass,
untouchable, disappearing.
You cried in bed, neck twisted
like a giraffe looking
for the opposite side of a baobab tree,
and I told you that you were beautiful
even though no one
thought so, anymore.
It didn't matter then whether
I was holding your
greasy heart in my hands,
or my own,
they were the same fragments,
wracked with guilt and
blood vessels,
weak sutures in their stems.
We lay in your bed for five minutes
before you choked
on your own salt water seasoning,
blew your nose into the white
eyelet comforter
like it was tissue and you
really couldn't be bothered to care.
And I remember thinking that
my whole world was a sea,
and I, a boat,
floating listlessly,
toward land.
Tea for TwoI observed her fragile corpse upon the cemetery seat, looking to and fro like a lost pigeon. She blinked her watery green eyes at me just once as I approached, then let them oggle wide.
"Madam," said I, "have you any need of assistance?"
A soft moan echoed back across the dying rhododendrons.
"Are you tired? Lost?" A quick glance at her spittle-slathered chops. "Hungry?"
She nodded vigorously and a bit of froth flew loose to stick upon a nearby leaf. I watched as it slowly slid its way to the very tip and plopped with a light "thwack" upon the freshly upturned soil.
"Er, there ought to be a dead squirrel or two out back by the fence. I imagine Mortimer left something, he's always forgetting what he's doing and scampering off, you know how those crazy groundskeepers can be . . ."
She made a sound a bit like the braying of a hound.
"Perhaps you don't. Anyhow, come along."
When dealing with the dead, it's best to be polite. I suppose I would be anyhow, though, I can't help it. It's simply
city drowned cleanbirds fly bluer before a hurricane,
wings sharper, the bricks neater.
one train is always longer than the
other. i cried about it. the saturated
city, droplets of colour caught on
tape & rewinding, cups me in its
palms, i am a bug on its window,
imagining all of it underwater &
people clapping in a silent film,
the last dying bubbles curtsying
on their lips, for their marble town
the white skied & terrible atlantis.
In summer we all burnThe summer is coming,
I hear the beach roaring from here,
can see shirts hung over shoulders,
sunglasses, arms round waists,
can feel the earth's purrs,
breaking hibernation,
pollens tossed up at us in fanfare.
Ants are walking over me
because we're sharing a tree together.
Back to back, we're trying to
make our winter's pallour a warmer shade.
Is it some sort of personal sign
when you let your shoe-tongues fill with tan bark,
when it's driven you mad your whole life?
Or when you eat ice-cream in public (the sticky
fingers a mere afterthought)?
These trees though, they're not changing.
I can't help thinking they're
often doing better than we are.
Summer is coming; they sit still and burn.
Some go out with a bang!
Others fall to dust.
But us, we fuss and flail.
Still we burn.
But hey!
Summer is for beaches and getting laid.
Summer is for stretching,
for sticking your proboscis into
the rivers and guzzling.
No, I can't help thinking about
the skeletons at the waterholes in the Mallee.
I
31:12N, 121:30Emy Dear i just noticed
my balcony is shaped
like wings
and the wind is billowing
the moon up, up to-night
in her dusty purple garb
and i think
no Dear i do not want
to leave here: where men
build bridges over oceans
and live inside of mountains
like river dragons
where the sun shines
not at all at noon but gleams
like an orange at sundown
where the moon walks home
surefooted to where my neck
cannot crane
:thumb272126467: HubrisThe world is not a skeleton. It does not ache bone-deep with our atrocities, nor is it fragile and ready for the breaking. It knows nothing so human, except perhaps to forgive our pride. Let me explain:
Young, I am a bright star with small, pudgy hands for guiltless flower-crushing. Before even that, I am a wispy squall for food, unused to knowing anything but myself, and warmth, and hunger.
The concept of a hero is a natural progression from understanding speech. I am Me. I am the one all the stories talk about, born special, to whom both innocence and wisdom are possible. I am so great a part of my own self that I do not know it can be detached.
I am eleven, narrow-boned and alone in the red earth, when I first feel it.
A seagull slews out of the bright sky and pegs its beak to the stones, draws it up wriggling. I watch its gullet bob. My hand floats up to mirror the lines of its head against the air. There is a cry, and its eye is a pond of yellow fire staring at me, the air a storm
Les Petits Princes
"James is dying," Nefertiti said, her voice a whisper and barely audible from the balcony. The gray stone was cool beneath her hands, smooth from generations before her, and comforting to support herself on as she stared down to the gardens and gates of their palace below.
Queen Nefertiti was dark haired and tan, with wide eyes and a thin smile. It was her husband their children took after. Both young men with blond hair and blue eyes, both growing tall and strong and moving towards becoming the rulers of their odd-named nation.
Her husband's, Arthur's, breath caught. A short little gasp and snarl as his fists clenched by his side. His curses were so soft that it was difficult to catch them between the night-things and lazy breeze.
"Oswald cannot lead."
"He will have to."
Footsteps, and Arthur was pacing. "Could we find an excuse to appoint a Regent?"
"He is already seventeen," Nefertiti said. "When you die, he will be king."
Arthur cursed again, louder, as Nefertiti left her perch at
Rooibos TeaBreathe deep the chai haze—
Picasso's djinn,
a muse of eggshells and grandma's lace tablecloths,
cradles the tea kettle to her chest
and abandons Latin words and names—
flotsam and jetsam dribbling
irrelevant among the little red tea leaves;
the driftwood of genus and species bumping
against the shores of the South African scrublands.
She hovers orange and indigo,
a quavering flame of dreams
and drained tea dregs—
divination with a soft-spiced voice
at the bottom of the mug,
never quite gone—
a flock of Van Gogh crows
frozen in their hayfields.
The World is Made of Stories by julietcaesar One Last Star   no moon to be found
in the predawn twilight,
   but one last star —
somewhere in the distance
a robin's lilting call
AnnieThere was this old woman who used to live under the bridge across the street from my building. She smoked like a chimney, and spent all of the money she got on cigarettes, so we'd all take turns bringing her coffee and bagels, or a sandwich, or spaghetti or something. She never talked to anyone. I think she was mute. I think she had Tourette's, too, because she had this funny little twitchy thing going on all the time, and she would make weird noises that weren't actually words.
And she was an artist. She made these fun sculptures out of clothes hangers and things she found in the dumpster. She would build them overnight, then after a couple of days they'd disappear. I don't know whether the city came and picked them up, or she took them somewhere or what.
And then she died. I wasn't the one who found her. It was Shane From Upstairs who was taking her a plate of leftover barbecue and saw that fuck, she's not moving. And he put down the plate and rolled her over, and sure enough, she wa
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Mature Content




Many thanks goes out to this month’s suggesters!



angelStained Carmalain7 Sperpy neurotype-on-discord BatmanWithBunnyEars Naria-hime HugQueen neonxaos bowie-loon123 Steamstrike thorns

If you wish to suggest a DD



Here are each CV’s guidelines:

Halatia: halatia.deviantart.com/journal…
ikazon: lightningmonkey.deviantart.com…
BeccaJS beccalicious.deviantart.com/jo…
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