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renga tree- hangoverjust before dawn
the hunchbacked moon
limps home
Letter to First Poet on Mars
Letter to the first poet on Mars

Do not say "red".
Avoid mention of Ares.
In fact, don't wax classical
at all.
Keep it simple.
Don't drink the water.
There isn't any.
Say there is.
Exaggerate the prospects
for terraforming.
Tell us the weather is nice.
Or, that it will be.
Wish we were there.
Tell us so.
Invent a new word
for red.
Write it.
Make a circle.
Better yet
construct a sphere.
Create a word for gravity
and place it at the center.
Empty the sky of stars.
Give us a proper beginning.
Write: "I've reached the summit
of Olympus Mons,"
and, "from this sacred height,
I can see beyond Tharsis
a world without gods
AntesWe are We, the Hunters of greatest knowledge and spell-blood. We use spell-words to hunt and to Change our bodies to rocks or trees. It has long been forbidden to Change to other Hunters or Hunted, or to kill others of We; yet it happened, and without it We would not be living.

This is that tale.

This is a tale from before the Fire, before the Dark, when the world was still green and the sky was still blue.

We had a Pack in the north, running free under the moon. The hunt was good. The Pack was strong and the prey was weak. The prey was a Hunter, a small running-Hunter; and so he turned, hissing spell-words, but he was claw- and tooth-stro
On the Subject of Finding XI'll have you know that I've just spent a considerable amount of time searching for x. I've looked in all of the places that x might plausibly reside, and even in some places where I assumed x would never be caught dead, but I've come up empty-handed.

I checked to see if x was under the bed, perhaps hidden among old school notes and forgotten art projects and lonely orphan socks. I scoured the closet, checking in every pocket of every innumerable pair of jeans, which, trust me, is no mean feat. I screened for x in every drawer of every dresser in every room, but it was all to no avail.

I proceeded to flip through all of the books that have
The Encounter at Elsie'sIt's a rough hand at my shoulder and I'm being dragged, thrown really, out the front door.  

Right away I recognize her pet.  The cloth over his mouth moves, but the blast was too close and I shake my head, pointing to my ear.  He understands.  He grips my arm with a hand of ice, firm and clinical, doing his job as ordered; and drags me to the side of the establishment with an urgency that has little to do with my preservation.  I can't hide my amusement at that fact, dire as our situation may be.  Abruptly I am thrown, shoved too hard into the shadows and against the wall, my verte
The SeaWhen you make the two one, you will become the Sons of Adam, and when you say, 'Mountain, move away,' it will move away.  
                         Thomas 106: 1-2

Thumos
When I returned to town, I heard the stories:

That you'd walked the oak path,
And past the angel with the flaming sword;
      Beneath the river,
      Behind the trees
      And through a pantheon
         
Zindigi Life Monsoons Ch 1When Pavarti died, the sunlight went with her. Any fledgling rays that had once, cautiously, shined down on a family so desperately in need of light, left nothing but the dust of Mumbai roads clinging to the windows. It was hastily snuffed out, like the lazy wisps of a tobacco beedi, purchased by a seedy rickshaw driver at cheap roadside stalls.

We were the meager funeral procession, my father and I, the now oldest child, and we watched the two disinterested day laborers unfeelingly carry her remains to the cemetery of an abandoned church. The smug sunlight languidly settled into a distant horizon. Even as the blazing humidity diminished, sw
Cretaceous YardThe call came in at 1500 hours, exactly twenty minutes after Leviner returned from his break. He picked up the phone and listened.

"We'll be there right away, sir."

On the other side of the desk, his partner looked at him. "A homicide?"

"If only we could be so lucky," Leviner snorted, making Ellsie wince.

It was just another case of illegal dumping. Once the 'cera crew had cleared away the overgrowth of ferns, Leviner stalked his way in. "What do you see?" Ellsie called. Although the entrance to the small shed was large enough to easily accommodate Leviner, there was no way Ellsie was fitting inside. Not that it was her fault. Maiasaurs w
Recycled DreamsI was halfway down the second floor apartment stairs when I realized I'd left my left arm on the table.

It's no surprise of course, for I've always had a habit of misplacing important things like keys, documents, and identification cards, but to leave one’s  arm on the table is truly embarrassing. I would have run back to get it, but the bus driver is always a bit early on Tuesdays and I could already hear the distant hum of the engine making its way to me. And it's not like I really need it for work anyway. So I left it behind.

It's penguins and oranges today; my latest client is a fairly normal one. The last dreamer wanted marsupia
.SetIt is Akhet, the season of sorrow and silt, and Set
must tense his sandbreath against the slick of wet
once more. It's always the same: though he's unsure
who started the game, or whose face he wears,
he knows he must prepare for the beginning of the end,
the bite of night and all the slippages in the inbetween.

And he swore he'd bait their breath,
but they'd rather choose death than fear,
with their tombstone legs, arms pegged
in sockets and their locked ears,
burying themselves beneath blocks
built to the sun. They outrun him, every time.

It's a crime. He remembers what his mother said:
do what you're able to keep them faithful
So Much Beauty in DirtChang was about to end his shift when he found the portal to hell. The most sensible thing to do was run. Just pack up and leave. Cover it back up, take your pay, pack up as soon as you got home and leave town by daybreak.  Chang was a sensible man. You don't live this long in the mines without learning to be sensible. Unfortunately for him, he was also a kind man.

"Don't go all the way down my shaft," he told Li. "Stop halfway and start a new tunnel. Say you were following a small vein."

Li was ten years his junior. He just recently returned home after a failed attempt to start a life in Shanghai. Unlike in the city, the mine was always hi
If Kronos Drank Milk When I was little, Mama always told me that you couldn't swear by God's name, because then He might expect you to do something for him. So she always swore by milk. I felt very enlightened.

"Milk," she'd mutter whenever I forgot to hang up the laundry, "I've raised a useless child." Or, sometimes it was more like, "Milk! Jessie, get outta that tree, girl!" Things like that.

People would always look at us strangely, and not because Mama and I looked so different. We'd be in the store and Mama would be muttering "milk" at the oddest times, and I'd be standing on the other side of the aisle with my hands hiding in the edges of my coat pocke
PicaI'd had a dream.  You know the way dreams
shake you up sometimes?  Got up in the dark
and under the fridge's strip-lit yawn
I fiddled the rind off the cheese, thinking of nothing.
Shredded it slowly -- a squeak in my teeth --
and swallowed, felt an eerie kind of calm.

It went on from there.  I worried I was pregnant,
craving brick-dust in the cold back yard, dabbing spats of talc
on my yellowing tongue. But it wasn't my womb
that turned and swelled like bread with its sickmaking ordinaryness.
I spurned that stuff first: potatoes and meat
like gobs of sand in my gut.

I did do my best to stick to f
The Furnish Is EverythingIt was 183 days ago when Minerva Kisling the Yiddish Mentalist first came to my train station. She toured the Neptune-Aries circuit in vaudeville. I had seen her glossy photographs a few times outside of the Easton theater and The Springhouse when she played there, but I never saw her in person. At least, I never saw her until the locomotive that was supposed to be bringing her husband failed to arrive with said husband.

As a redcap for the Southwest Lake Station with a half-dozen sisters, I scarcely could afford the ten cents or the time to see a vaudeville show on a regular basis, but the children working near the tracks would put on chea
Chemical Attractions, Part IWe can learn a lot from salt.

The chlorine atom is fundamentally lacking, longing to fill that gaping hole in its valence shell, and those bright bits of energy dancing in amorphous clouds around a sodium atom are just too tempting for the poor chlorine to resist. Chlorine probably knows that it has no claim to those electrons. It might lie awake at night for days or weeks in a fit of conscience, seeking alternatives before sending out tentative feelers and inviting Sodium to join it for coffee... It's a romantic comedy in minature, and I think that we can skip over the montage of dates and dinners and late nights on the couch in front of a
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On Being JudgedI watched the visitor from my lonely spot at the bar.
The bartender slid me a glass of beer with enchanted smile on her face before taking a tray of chips and dip to his table. Oh for the love of all things good, she was under the spell too?
The way people were consumed by him, it infuriated me. He had this misplaced confidence that only few could really see for what it was, folly. He wasn't even that attractive.
His nose wasn't crooked or anything, he was just plain. Even as I brooded and glared in his general direction, there was a certain quality about him that made him undeniable. You couldn't just be lukewarm around him and get away with it. No matter what, there was no way around being either hot or cold to James Price.
As for me? If it isn't already obvious, I'm cold. Even now I wanted to drain my beer and throw my glass at him, the bastard. What was so special about him anyways? Word on the street was that he was a really good councilor. He could fix anyone's situation with the

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Click here for more chapters, shorts, and notes on Wayward.




Hello! This is Wayward, my most challenging project on the DA. I really feel like I'm out of my element here but I'm also loving every minute of it. Everything I've posted is currently the first draft, so comment/ critiques and suggestions are welcomed as long as they're dished out nicely.

Thanks so much for reading and I hope you enjoy.

Thanks go to :iconkira73: and :iconthorns: For there helpful critiques and suggestions.


:iconveryexcitedplz: THANK YOU ^Halatia for the feature!!! And THANK YOU =thorns for the feature! I really... really... really.... never thought I'd get one of these and I'm very touched that you both thought to feature me! :heart: Thank you so much. :hug:

Oh... have I said thank you yet? ;p

P.S SORRY in advance if you don't get a thank you for the watch or fav.... the system apparently thinks it's spam. So... erm... THANK YOU SO VERY MUCH FOR THE FAV!!! if you have faved.... I might be able to get around to thank you later... if the system agrees.


This story and characters belong to me. No taking them... This should be redundant by now, but copying and pasting even if you give credit without my permission is still stealing, so don't do it.
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Daily Deviation

Given 2011-04-04
The suggester says of Wayward Ch1 by =Emrose88: Who knew waking up with amnesia was such a fun trip into sarcasm? ( Suggested by `thorns and Featured by `Halatia )
love 3 3 joy 3 3 wow 1 1 mad 0 0 sad 0 0 fear 0 0 neutral 0 0
:iconvaticinium:
!Vaticinium Jun 28, 2011
hi, DA called they want some of their message board back so other people can use it, gawd-had to scroll so much my mouse wheel is smoking, and I forgot what I wanted to say too...
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:iconemmyisazebra:
=EmmyIsAZebra Jun 28, 2011  Hobbyist Writer
Hahaha, Believe me, I was astonished when I received so many comments! :XD: Aww, I'm sure you'll remember it.
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:iconvaticinium:
!Vaticinium Jun 28, 2011
na I was just bein silly-it was insane how far ya had to go to reach the bottom, I wanted to be sure that my"this is a great read" speech got entered but it was a fail, I think my other comment may have covered me, I am lookin forward to Ch 3 though :)
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:iconemmyisazebra:
=EmmyIsAZebra Jul 17, 2011  Hobbyist Writer
Gnee! Haha, I'm looking forward to making sense of it. :XD:
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:iconvaticinium:
!Vaticinium Jul 17, 2011
:) still can't wait to read it...
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:iconemmyisazebra:
=EmmyIsAZebra Jul 17, 2011  Hobbyist Writer
:eager:
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:iconvaticinium:
!Vaticinium Jun 28, 2011
I like the story, like the way you seem to be leading into things-seems you have more than enough critics-so that's my story-stickin to it. I like where it seems to be going ...next ....
Reply
:iconemmyisazebra:
=EmmyIsAZebra Jun 28, 2011  Hobbyist Writer
Aww! Thank you! :hug: I'm always glad to know someone likes this. :heart: :heart: :love:
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:icongricken:
~Gricken Apr 26, 2011  Hobbyist General Artist
It appears that I have not commented on this epic first chapter. :iconimseriousplz:

I love that first line. It's one of those openings that hook you in right away. I also love that last line. It's a very interesting way of telling someone she's a vampire.

This chapter is perfect, yo. :iconmonkeythumbplz: But of course, you already have your DD to tell you that. ;p
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:iconemmyisazebra:
=EmmyIsAZebra Apr 26, 2011  Hobbyist Writer
:giggle: but now you have, so it's all good! :heart:

Thank you! :hug: I know that I had a lot of fun with it. I've change direction just a wee bit by adding in a prologue. Where you still won't know that it's a paranormal story until you read this chapter.... this chapter was so much fun to write. I do love these characters when they work with me. They're such drama queens. :roll:

:blushes: I'm still in disbelief about that. I thought I'd never get one of those... and with such lovely comments. :B XD
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