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Indigo Vales

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Indigo Vales

Tag Archives: prompt

10 Saturday Aug 2019

Posted by Kristine in Uncategorized

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hyena, lion, Persephone, poem, poem?, prompt, season, seeds, sorting, the long night

She Lay Curled In An Animal’s Trench

She lay curled in an animal’s trench
Soft shed hair helped keep her warm.
She patted the ground hoping for lion
but most likely flighty hyena lay here.
She pulled in handfuls of dust and chaff,
plucked shallow weeds.
They smelled of old blood and broken loyalty.

Obsidian sky dripped malachite meteors,
low slow and long.
Chandeliers of stars once reflected in the pond
that lay east of her chin
But the water was gone
consumed by tongue and air.

Rested, she rose and twisted tufts of weed and hyena
into her hair.
She spat into the sandy earth and ground it in her palms,
painting the four points on her face.
She continued her long walk west back to the sorting place
determined to be a mirthless, disobedient beast
until the sun came back to retrieve her.

(Persephone’s Staircase)

Taxi Ride

13 Saturday Jul 2019

Posted by Kristine in Uncategorized

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At Last, Diana Ross, disco, Flooding, flying, HoW, music, prompt, taxi

There was a time when I didn’t want to fly because I hated flying. You know, the act of flying. That thing where wheels up, pressed into seat and all the bad things happen in the first few minutes or the last few minutes when rubber meets the road when it’s all gonna be okay or it’s the moment you wished you burned your journals before you left home. 

            Then there was the time I learned to understand how the act of flying works: you get over the fear of the crashing thing and realize the bigger picture is you’re at the mercy of the airlines. Sure you ordered a ticket online (which no one taught you how to do, you figured it all out yourself, wishing you had someone looking over your shoulder to guide you and say good job!), then you marked the days you’d be away, getting ready for the big day like you were cramming for a test the night before hoping there’d be no mechanical failures or oversold seats or the other dumb things dumb airlines do.  It all works out, once you realize how flying works, and as long as you keep taking deep breaths and pretend you are a mourning dove flying or a dolphin diving you are fine.

            Then it’s all over and you need a ride home in the soaking thunderstorm that kept you from getting a gate, sitting long on the runway but that’s okay, too. It’s like being stuck in a subway car or the DMV. It’s inconvenient but at least you’re in one piece, okay?  So I walked the mile to find my bag (which is actually Dad’s luggage he never used) and went outside to see if there’s a Norfolk taxi black and white available.  Nope.  Life is full of decisions, you know, like should I sleep on the plane or watch a crappy movie that the chick with the prosthetic right arm is streaming across the aisle.  I chose the Eastside taxi instead of calling for the usual because I was so tired, I just needed to get home and didn’t care as long as it had four wheels and a go.  An elderly black man abandoned his fast food meal on the front seat and loaded my one bag. I told him where I needed to go, that I preferred the back way but he said I-64 was fine this time of night, no traffic, so I said fine, whatever. He drove like an old man and I liked it and then I was annoyed and then I liked it because I wanted him to move faster but if he did he’d be hitting the deep puddles that had accumulated during the thunderstorm I’d been sitting in at the airport.  Norfolk gets a lot of water but hasn’t found a way to drain it effectively.  He was a conservative driver and part of me was like “go man go” and the other part was like “thank you for not hydroplaning us into a terrible accident that makes me regret not burning my journals before I left.” 

And then!  And then.  He plugged in his music playlist and it all came home: Diana Ross of the 80s through the speakers.  Goddamn, I wanted my roller skates and silk shirt and forgot the airplane and my ache from sitting twisted so my elbow didn’t touch the other guy’s elbow and the crappy movie and leaving a writer’s nest and missing him singing ‘At Last.’ We made small talk. I told him to avoid the I-64 entrance across the way because it’s probably 3 feet deep by now, go back up town. He appreciated the advice from someone who’s lived here a while.  I tipped him good then dumped my stuff on the couch and slept like I hadn’t slept before. 

Upon Finding The Dragon’s Egg

24 Thursday May 2018

Posted by Kristine in Uncategorized

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amwriting, beach, dragon, egg, fear, Jim Morrison, ocean, pain, poetry, prompt, the Doors, weather

I awoke abruptly, squintingly, because the sun peered in my bedroom window, an alarm my body cannot refuse. Strange sun, Jim Morrison said in his notebook poem, and I opened my door after I put clothes on (but not shoes because no one needs shoes to walk from the balcony to the cool beach sand that was not far away.)  Strange sun well-riz on my right also known as East, the train of cool blue dawn retreated into the distance, laughing gulls squeaked overhead and moved on instead of making their usual mocking laughter from the breakwater that sounds like children a mile away calling out for help because they are drowning.

I walk barefoot on a beach where I found seashells in all stages of their lives tossed on the shingle by an uncaring sea, but all those shells and emerald mermaid’s hair wafting in the tidal pools are gone.  The Army Corps of Engineers came and did one heck of a job building up this little spit of land that had been slowly reclaimed by the ocean one winter storm, one summer hurricane at a time and now my feet trod sand the size of peppercorns instead of soft, creamy quartsy silt I fell in love with, all those tidal pools gone.  I am grateful yet disoriented. Strange.

So this morning I woke and walked and found the dragon’s egg. Should come as no surprise to anyone because the system that came from the west moved in and brought us a week of rain and a night of high wind, fearsome wind too early for hurricane but made us reach for our batteries and bottled water anyway.  I plucked the egg from the sand poor thing blown from her nest, abandoned, knowing that’s the worst thing I could possibly do but when did I ever abide by the rules, and I held it in my hand wondering what could I possibly do?  And then the shell broke, the creamy satin shell broke open and spilled out venom all over my hand and it hurt like the sting of a bee that begins slowly and takes over your interstitial fluids and spreads out and swells because it really, really, does not want you to be offending it yet you have by simply being in the wrong place at the wrong time and you are paying for your transgression. I held the dragon’s egg, seeping fluids hurting so much, but my pride kept me from screaming so I ran down and into the cold, cold water and submerged me and the egg hoping the pain would ebb.  The silken shell stuck to my hand. The venom came forth like a ginger lady’s tresses, Rapunzel-like, then dissipated in the brine. The shell dissolved and my pain dissolved too as I panted hopping foot to foot hoping not to step on a skate just going about his business.

Bonewitch

06 Sunday Sep 2015

Posted by Kristine in Uncategorized

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Bonewitch, Flash fiction, HoW, progress, prompt

The goddess wants me to tell you the story of the witch who lives in the blue school bus.

I hope tonight I will dream her whole life, and find the words ready to write in the morning.

9/7 Update: Her name is Bonewitch.  And she learns her sidekick’s true name upon giving her last breath.

Darwin’s Moon

27 Thursday Aug 2015

Posted by Kristine in Uncategorized

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

Flash fiction, goals, Niko's Boots, progress, prompt

Notes from the desk of Indigo Vales:  I completed (yes? completed?) a flash fiction piece that comes from a photo prompt at my beloved HoW.  I find I do very little writing that isn’t cathartic unless inspired by the prompts found there. I hope that as I increase my reading diet and continue to bend my back to the writing wheel each day, there will be less blogging and more “real” writing.  It is a goal. A vague one.  I haven’t actually created a publishing goal lately.  Am I in a position to create and state one right now?  *Notes empty coffee mug. Distracted. Will come back to that.*

In my excited state I shared the story with my spouse who said (to paraphrase) “Good writing, where’s the rest?”  So now I have to decide what to do with the rest of the piece. Is there enough of a tale to tell about Volusia and her friend Darwin? Does she ever decide to get her passport and travel to Cambodia and see the temples beneath the moon? Will she stay in love with her life, her freedom, or make the biggest mistake of her life and fall in love? What happens when a young woman uproots herself from her lavish family to see what happens when she throws herself at the footsteps of the world?  Um, looks like there’s a rest of the story there…  But I wanted to write about Niko, who is still stuck at the bottom of a crater, grievously wounded! How will he get out?  Does anything interesting happen to him if he makes it back to his village?  Less of a story there, no matter how much I enjoyed writing about his dilemma.

All I know is, it’s going to be a busy day here for my family. Some life-changing times going on. I believe there’s going to be some river-sitting and beer drinking in my future this afternoon, and tonight, and tomorrow, and I shall bring the laptop along with me and see if I can coax any words to come along.

Post-Prompt Letdown

13 Thursday Aug 2015

Posted by Kristine in Uncategorized

≈ 5 Comments

Tags

HoW, prompt, stereotypes

A writing prompt was posted the other day and I took interest in it.  The other writers did a smash-up job creating a story to go along with a black and white photo from a dark moment in American history.   I gave myself a few minutes to write to the photo.  Driving home from work I realized that I did a smash-up job gathering Southern stereotypes and dumping them on the page.  I realized what sets the others’ work apart from mine: their originality.   So I have learned from this. The prompts keep me learning, and I am so grateful for that.

Another Day In Paradise

11 Tuesday Aug 2015

Posted by Kristine in Uncategorized

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Tags

Flash fiction, HoW, prompt

I could feel him standing beside the bed like he always does.  He was hungry but didn’t have the sense to open the fridge door and put something on a plate he could set his teeth into.  He’d always been this way, and it was natural that he would come to my bedside the way we went to Momma’s bedside and beg for breakfast because only she could fill our plates with love.  After he stopped poking me and grinning, I got up and took three steps into the kitchen to put breakfast on, sky just barely light and the night creatures still calling Katy did but Katy didn’t. 

There’s a lot of things I know and one of them is what Katy’s brother did, that’s for sure.  We’re going to collect him up tonight and remind him what happens to folk when they put one toe out of line.  The other thing I know is that it’s a good thing I don’t sleep naked.  

I can tell by the look in Jeffy’s eyes he’s still hungry, so I scrape off my toast and grits onto his plate so I don’t have to hear him bellyachin for the rest of the day.  And if he tells me “I sure was beautiful back in the day” one more time, I swear to Christ on a crutch I won’t feed him for the rest of the week.  

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