January On Medium

This month's new short fiction has been rolling around in my head since the summer. It was part of a writing prompt we did at the Weekend Workshop I attended at the Iowa Summer Writing Festival, which went a little something like this:

Saturn, planet of melancholy
A great place for
Trends of contemporary living
Titan spins in its orbit
Magnificent
Like a blooming hosta
Wilting
Moving out
To feel dampness
Carrying with ease
Images of loved ones
In empy vessels
On Titan, we
find
dwindling bison
rainbow trout
wedged in the narrow pass
So frightened
At first, to be so far from the sun
Reaching through the firs
Reveals
Itself, like carved stone
While Saturn, planet of melancholy
spins like a 
silken dress
Above

(There's a few notes in the margins:

WRITERS GO TO SATURN

northern feel

great thick trees
climbing thru the
nitrogen)

And there's a reference to Billy Collins- Poet- forgetfullness-aimless love. No idea what that means. But this page of scribbled chicken scratch and a piss poor attempt at poetry- which is totally not my thing, by the way- eventually rattled around my brain enough and produced this:

Illumination On Titan

I haven't really take a good look at it yet, but I like to think that this one is a distance cousin to That's Venus, Baby which I wrote last year. I've been reading what I came up with last year and I'm actually surprised at how decent some of these pieces are. I've got three more on deck, so maybe when all is said and done I can start putting some of these out there to places and see if I can get one published.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

I Didn't Watch The State of The Union

I didn't watch the State of the Union last night for the first time in what seems like a very long time indeed. I didn't watch it out of some form of virtue-signalling protest. I didn't watch it because it started at about eight o'clock at that is prime time for bedtime for the kids. And anyone with kids will tell you: you don't mess with bedtime. Also, I just didn't care. I know in some areas of the flaming dumpster fire that is our political discourse these days that's a hanging offense. "You didn't care? How dare you not care! Aren't you against [insert controversy of the week here]?" or my favorite, "Well, you have the privilege of not caring about this stuff." No, it's not about my privilege. (That's an entirely different conversation.) I just genuinely did not care, because it did not matter. Both ends of the political spectrum live in parallel universes, I decided. They're going to listen to the same speech
Read more

Tintin, Ranked

Image
What can you say about Tintin? He's been around for decades- was one of the most popular comics of the 20th Century. He's spawned a television cartoon ( which I remember watching on Nickelodeon ) and more recently a movie ( two more of which are apparently coming, though it's been awhile since the movie dropped .) He hasn't been free from controversy- Tintin In The Congo is hard to find these days for a reason, the least of which is (what I'm guessing) the somewhat 'problematic' portrayal of Africans in the Belgian Congo when the reality of that chapter of colonial history was dark indeed. For sure, if there's an aspect of these books that makes me cringe somewhat, it's his portrayal of Africans. Herge's portrayal of Latinx individuals and cultures tends to be a bit better, though his portrayal of indigenous folks and Asians is somewhat mixed. He's excellent in The Blue Lotus , somewhat less so with his portrayal indigenous people in Ti
Read more

Psephology Rocks: Holiday Grab Bag Edition

Well, there's lots to talk about post-Election Day, not only in America, but there's a few bits and bobs from around the world worth touching on as well.  We'll start local and work upwards: Local:  Well, I went three for three in my City Council Endorsements- Botchway, Salih took the At-Large Seats and Susan Mims took the District B Seat.  The District B race between incumbent Susan Mims and student Ryan Hall was less of a contest than I think people were anticipating, as Mims won handily 59% to 41%. I had nothing in particular against Hall, per say- but I feel like if Raj Patel who was another student who ran a few cycles back (I want to say 2010?) had serious money and a serious platform behind him and didn't win, then Hall was going to be a long shot. He checked all the right progressive boxes for Iowa City, but he was running against an incumbent who might not be uber-Progressive, but not say, Terry Dickens either. I think Hall would have had a better shot aga
Read more