July Literature DDs Roundup

26 min read

Deviation Actions

TheMaidenInBlack's avatar
Published:
2.9K Views
:iconthemaideninblack: Features by TheMaidenInBlack

this Daisy is a Wolf in disguisewhen I asked why wolves
howl they told me
Daisy, can you not hear it?
can you not hear the moon
howling first?
"you are strong, but you
could be stronger"
is the mantra they burden me,
a seven year old, with.
kite strings embellished
with blood keep me dependent
they ask - "what is one more
betrayal? one more death?"
it is nothing when I am
fourteen and twice
as dead as the women next to me.
but I am not dead.
not yet, because they wrench
back God's hand from my body.
at twenty-one my waves
spill into the bloodied ocean
and I can finally
hear the moon's howl.
  on mo(u)rningssome days the church bells are like wailing saxophones,
and then again, never the happy kind.
it’s only monday morning and already someone
is in need of flowers. or, miracles.
say god took the week off yet the prayers
keep pouring in like open wounds. what a cruel joke,
that this ground refuses to grow no matter how many
bodies we give to hold between its teeth;
say we are all killing ourselves, some of us are just much better at it
be baton or bullet or building but nothing after.
maybe this was the miracle all along, this disappearing act.
then again, maybe just the brass afterwards.
and then again, never the happy kind.
some days i hear the ghosts filling the streets like children do
every one of their faces smiling, and alive.
  Fool in the RainI heard that summer was just
around the open bend, cusped
by the sparkling tears of spring.
But, her hand, it had no ring,
so she gave way in a rush.
I guess that winter crushed
the weedy, spurious
hope we were on the brink,
but spring’s gonna come around here again.
I heard that summer came around rainless
I saw that autumn stole away the trust.
You know that winter always leaves her sting.
Ever freezing, whirring, blurring, slurring,
but spring’s gonna come around here again.
   UnclearThe picture is framed in lakeside mists,
We're swathed in blankets
And chuckling about how
We look like Scottish immigrants,
And groaning and grinning,
Because we aren't morning people.
The sun creeps over a sapphire hill
And lights the water on fire
We sit and sigh
Our bare feet tucked up
On the cold wooden pier,
And I fit exactly beneath your arm.
The scene is utterly clear
Shining like the morning;
I look up into your face,
But I don't know what I expected
Because that part
Is not so clear.
  hei wish i could tell you
that every poem is about you,
that every kiss drawn in adjectives
is being sent your way,
that the mysterious He
who dances in every verse
walks with your gait
talks with your Jersey accent
and i wish that you knew
that your face, your smile, your name hides behind every metaphor,
that every simile is like the first time we looked at each other
is like the first time we spoke to each other
is like the first touch, the first kiss
and i wish i could read
these words to you
i wish that my stomach would stop
churning long enough
for me to feel safe opening my mouth
i wish the fear would flee from every goosebump
from every chattering tooth
and i wish that you would listen
that the words would reach you
instead of bouncing off your smile
and clinging to the cotton of your shirt
i wish that you would listen
to me
to every poem that paints you so obviously
and i wish i could tell you
that every poem is about you,
that every phrase, every word, every letter is written
a
 


:iconbrennennn: Features by brennennn


FFM10-Searching for SomedayWhen I wake it is on a hardwood floor and in a dress so tight it hurts to breath. I gasp and the air whistles in. There is an inhaler next to a tipped over wine bottle. I reach for it with finely manicured nails, chipped at the ends.
Now I can breathe. I scan the room. It is mostly empty. No pictures or personal artefacts. A single mirror peaks out from behind the closet door; a strange place for such a thing. I stagger towards it, legs longer than I am accustomed to. I wobble, my feet sheathed in nude heels. I stop and then kick them off. They bounce against the wall and nearly clobber me in the face.
I breathe onto the glass then wipe away the mist. My face slides into focus. It is pretty but I am used to such things. What makes it particularly striking is the long scar running down the corner of my baby-blue eyes to the curve of my sharply pointed chin like a teardrop drawn in by a toddler.
This is the kind of face you’d never forget. I wonder how it happened. It puckers along
   FFM16-20 Genre Mashup    “We need more magic in this room,” the Fable Book said, and proceeded to cough out a few fairies and a cloud of pink pixie dust.
    “No, no, no,” the Garden Book argued, as it always did, swatting away fairies with its glossy, image filled pages. “If you want to brighten this place up, it should be with a few well placed shrubs and a water feature. It spat out a pair of box hedges and a paving stone.
    “That’s boring,” Fable book whined. “This is a library, a place of magic.” It discharged a tiny pink dragon and two unicorns. The unicorns ganged up on the dragon and began chasing it around the shelf, egged on by the watching fairies.
    Garden book kicked one of the unicorns, sending it spinning away to collide with a fairy. Both fell to the shelf with a tiny wumph. “Get your head out of the clouds, Fable. A library is a place of orde
  Planetary ProblemsIt was impossible to wash the stink of pollution off her surface, but she tried every date night. Earth was waiting on Pluto to arrive for dinner and a movie. She was always late because she insisted on living in the middle of nowhere. None of the other planets approved of their relationship, seeing as Earth's inhabitants had removed Pluto from their planet list. Earth chuckled, accidentally creating an earthquake that destroyed a small island. They had no idea there were twenty nine official planets, Pluto included. 
Pluto arrived, giving her a quick kiss that gave the American midwest a mid-summers freeze. "Ready?" 
"Of course. I thought we could watch the polar bears tonight, I feel rather sorry for them." Earth said.
"Of course, I just... I thought we could talk about it first." 
Earth sighed, sending an avalanche down onto some unlucky climbers. "Do we have to?" 
"I want you to be my universe partner. I want dozens of little moons with you. I love you." Pluto s
  In Soviet Russia...    I always thought that the stories were nothing but jokes. Cheap laughs for sweaty, unoriginal interneteers. And so I had never thought that when I did visit Soviet Russia and went to my rented car, it would indeed drive me.
   
The black Sudan smiled at me and spoke in a murmur by lifting its hood; "finally. I've been waiting for days." Then it snatched the keys I were holding, stuck it in my mouth and jumped on my back.
    It was strange at first, but I quickly got used to it. The car wasn't as heavy as people said it was and it was actually quite nice. It told me to turn by gently pulling at my ears and always sang along to the radio (which, by the way, only played Boney M.'s "Rasputin" on constant repeat). Along the way I saw mostly strange sights, feeling like quite the tourist. A short bulldog was taking its owner for a walk, and a new Kickstarted company was advertising its slogan; "Machine Programs You!"
    After
 <da:thumb id="623321210"/>  NimueThe magician and the huntress hurried through the forest as the storm lashed the trees and cracked the sky above. Although the raindrops soaked the magician and battered the brim of his hat, they seemed to be taking pains to avoid even brushing the huntress. When they arrived at the arch of the tower ruin, he was exhausted, while she showed barely a sign of fatigue.
“Are you alright?” coughed the magician, slumping against a pillar.
“Thanks to you,” answered the huntress, sitting beside him. “What is this place?”
His eyes could see through time, what this place was and what it would be, from an exquisitely furnished nobleman's folly to a hollow wreck punched through by branches, home only to beasts and ghosts.
“Home to a couple, for a short time,” he whispered. “Lovers, before tragedy befell them.”
They were almost nose to nose, breathing heavily, exhilarated by the run and the weather. The magician felt himself magnetised to
 <da:thumb id="617535455"/>  Teeth    “Mage!” Professor Listner snapped. He was a wizard of the old style, complete with a beard, spectacles, and everything. With the name Mage and training to be a mage, you can bet I was his favorite student to torment. I was everyone’s favorite student to torment.
    I cringed. I knew what was coming. Sure, I was trying to be discreet but I never was good at being sneaky. The red hair kind of made me stand out too much to get away with anything.
    Still, I tried to put on an innocent smile. “Yes, professor?”
    He ripped the ingredient out of my hand and gave me a stern scowl. “For the last time, we do not use sandpaper in a soothing bath spell! If I catch you trying to put this…” He grabbed a blackberry bramble off my table. “…or this…” He carefully picked up a handkerchief with poison oak leaves in it. “…or this in y
  WildwomenI borrowed a horse last Thursday to hunt the Wildwoman.  He was tall and painted hungry; She’d borrowed time, then disappeared.
I could not bend to pick the rocks.  The horse kept kicking dusty circles.  ‘Round the barn, the Wildwoman crept in boots that used to be mine.
We didn’t see Her till the last three barrels, where She sprouted from the grit between my fingers to silence shouting hands.
Winding down sore muscles, drawing ankles to earth, She traced my body before darting up my spine - straight line from heels, to hips, to Crown.
And in the half-breath the horse spied hay and tried to throw me from the saddle, She stepped in.
And for the first time since we woke up drowning, we rode this out together - Wildwomen.
   The Mirror Lied       Deumos stood on the threshold of the woman’s home. Deumos didn’t care who this lady was or the fact that she was married and had three children. The only fact important to her was at this particular moment, this housewife was alone. Deumos watched her hum softly to herself as she prepared dinner for her family. Like other demons, Deumos was nothing more than a whisper in the woman’s head. A void. While the woman could not physically see Deumos, Deumos could see her shifting uncomfortably underneath the pressure of Deumos’s presence in the room.     
    The need to devour a soul writhed within Deumos and so she glided toward the housewife.  Looming over her, she firmly grasped the housewife from underneath her chin and pulled her towards herself.  The housewife, mouth agape, did not have enough time to mutter out even the smallest cry for hel
  undefined[---404 error: file not found---]
     I am undefined
     like the irrational variables
     that rot your computer; 
     never quite fitting into the
     neatly arranged arrays
     that fragment this world 
     into disconcerting 
     congregations of 1s and 0s, 
     (the DNA between
      my ribs does not 
      conform to your primal
      binary code.)
[—503 eror: server overload—]
     I am undefined,
     an error in excess
     desperately trying to exit
     this (in)finite loop of
     on-off signals that
     consistently crashes 
     my delicate newtork of
    
  Days (Short Story)
    The first day they met was an epic disaster.
    Aleks cursed at the male barista behind the cash register for receiving the wrong coffee—decaf instead of his usual double shot espresso. He yelled so much that tears began to run down the young worker’s face before she appeared. In a flurry of wild red hair and jangling bangles, she swept the poor barista aside and stood firmly on the other side of the counter with a wide smile. “What seems to be the problem, sir?”
    He yelled at her too. Something along the lines of “liquefied crap for coffee,” and “I know animals that are better trained than all of you!” She continued to smile and nod, her bracelets rattling when she lifted her arm to brush a red curl from her eyes. Aleks walked away with a free espresso to down on the long subway ride to his work and a scowl that dissuaded everyone from getting too close.
~
  
  FFM 06 - Progress in ActionThe chambermaids cleaned and disinfected the tank with lye again, and Spencer took a moment to collect himself before squeezing the magnifying monocle back into his right eye.  He had gone over the machine a dozen times, but he would go over it a dozen-and-one if that’s what it took.  Every little brass bolt was properly tightened, and every hose was sealed exactly as it needed to be, connected to a variety of vials and beakers.  The electrical coils were fully charged from the previous night’s thunderstorm, and all of his thermometers and barometers assured him that the steam pump was properly simulating the temperature and pressure of a human womb… and yet, somehow the tank could not sustain life.  He tried not to think too much about the failed attempts, nor the tiny, cold bodies that he had sent off to the morgue over the past months.  A scientist had to focus on the present, and the task at hand.
A bell chimed, and he raised his head to w
  PromI mean, God, like, school, you know?  
I’ll be so glad to get out too.  I’ll say this for the place, it’s done wonders for my, like, muscle tone?  I’ve got calves to literally die for and as for my ass…
Stop looking at my ass Sarah.  God, are you, like, a lezzer or something?  
No, I’m only joking hun.
Yeah, well I mean the male to female ratio was the thing that attracted me to the, like, course, to be honest.  Outnumbered by fit, rich guys.  What’s not to like?  Seven girls, two hundred-odd guys.  Those are my kind of odds.
Still, sister, it’s just me and you left now.  The dropout rate has been, like, so high!  And I don’t understand it.  I know I’m not the brightest, I mean, I’m like, bottom in nearly everything, right?  So I don’t know how I’ve like, made it this far.  I guess it’s just pure dumb luck.
  orlandoa green ocean bivouac
leaves fluttering against 
the cerulean sky 
    dark doe eyes
    glazed and grazing
    upon the bountiful earth
the ghost of the moon
hangs in daylight
a hush in the valley
all is
    calm
all is
    safe
a twig snaps
the crackle of leaves
then everything
is blurred lights
horns and hooves
upturned
and a herd
forty-nine strong
slips into the dirt
blood seeping
brilliant crimson
painting the grass
the survivors
limp away
    while oaks crane
    their branches
    peering down upon
    the carnage
no shock, no hysteria
as if it was expected
as if it was
    normal
soft creaks 
moans 
fill the forest
and a man
on tv
talks about
hunting rights
while the deer
lay butchered
 


:icondoughboycafe: Features by doughboycafe

Mature Content

  The Big DealIt's funny how things change.
     I distinctly remember being impressed by teletext—being able to conjure news and weather information onto my big, chunky CRT TV at the press of a button—not realising that within a few years nearly everyone in the country would carry a device in their pocket that gave them access to the combined knowledge of nearly everyone in the world. And when I worked that job, selling these marvellous devices second hand—typically for less than the cost of a ticket to somewhere with better job prospects—little did I realise what would come next.
    VR was a big deal at the time. AR would have been a big deal if more people had had any idea what it was. 4K sounded like a big deal, but in fact wouldn't become a big deal until everyone had an extraordinarily big TV. Essentially, for quite a while, there were a lot of two-letter gimmicks purporting to be a big deal. But the real Big Deal—the Big D
 

Mature Content

  I am Become ObsoleteThe stars danced.
It was a wonder they even could, with no engine, no stellar drive, nothing but gravity and the ingenuity of man, that and the desire for great scientific achievements to be trivialized by profit. It didn't matter. The universe didn't care.
Here's the thing: it lasts a long time. We talk about a million years and think 'that is conceivable, in a kind of general sense', but we can't, not really, not when we lived maybe .0001 percent of that. A piece of plastic isn't permanent, and even the stars, a fixture in our lives if there ever was one, are temporary, fleeting.
I sat on the bench and watched the stars through my sunglasses, thinking. This was one of those hubris of man moments where you have to wonder if we have gone too far, if this, finally, is where the line was crossed and we'd all die for our naivety. But we weren't dead, not yet. When the Trinity test had finally boomed across the sky, it had left more of an impact on the psyche than on the scenery  - 'I
   Everything to nothingJacinta works in the multiplexer group at the megastructures up on Ganymede. They're building containment grids for wormholes, vast hexagonal meshes where each spline is maybe a kilometre long and they hang in orbit like a jet black openwork bracelet forming up around the small moon. 
Multiplexer is one of the most specialised roles. Each piece of the mesh is partly structural, partly energy grid, and partly calibration for the continuum-tearingly powerful wormhole fields we learned how to power up after reverse engineering the much smaller portals they found buried on Mars. So not only do you need a fleet cloud of automechs to slot all the enormous pieces into place, you also need someone there in the middle of it with all the 'mechs slaved to their senses so they can see and feel it all coming together in the right orientations to calibrate the containment.
So Jacinta hangs there, bulky in the power assist armour of her vac-work gear, the angular limbs glittering in the glow of
 

Mature Content

 




 


Comments6
Join the community to add your comment. Already a deviant? Log In