Magpie 39

Oh, look, a pile of leaves. I wonder if there's any bugs.

bugs ;;; bugs ;;; bugs

Oh yes, bugs. Very juicy.

buUUgs!

There's Clara. She wants my bugs.

I'll peck her if she tries.

peck.......peck.......peck

thinks she's so fine in her red feathers

I'll peck her. She's not getting mine.

buUUgs!

Oh, there's Rocky. Sooo handsome

Shake my feathers out, yes. Ohhh yes

Bug! got it.

Rocky's scratching in the dirt, looking us over with his bright eye,

Here! Right here!

I'll just walk over to that tree, show him my good side.

Here's Bess, strutting around, thinks she's so fine.

Get out of my way!

Peck you! I will.

Doesn't know a grub from a piece of wood, that Bess.

Ain't no bugs over here

bugs ;;; bugs ;;; bugs

buUUgs!

Oh, here's the Farmer! Where's the bucket of corn?

Where is it!

Gotta get there first Gotta get the corn.

Where is it? Get out of the way, you chickens!

Peck you! I will!

Here's a nice pebble. I like that one.

Here's the Farmer. He's picking me up!

He's got my feet! Help!

He's taking me away!

buUUgs!

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For other Magpie 39 Tales, click here!

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Magpie 35

They're all around

They were up and now they're down

They were green and soft

now they crackle underfoot

fill gutters, divert streams

They have changed

they blanket the ground, protecting it,

keeping it warm, encouraging its bugs and worms.

By spring they will be transformed

into new earth.

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That's Magpie Tale number 35. Join the fun over here.

To Mag, or not to Mag

The new Magpie prompt is up, and I'm thinking about it. On one hand, I like having that small but essential push to get me to write some fiction. I like reading the other posts from the same prompt, because there are some real gems in there.

On the other, Magpie Tales draws about 120 posts every week. Unlike other memes I participate in, where you usually really do make the rounds of all the posts every week, this is too many to do that. The traffic to my blog does not increase when I post to the Magpie list - only my regular readers plus one or two other magpie writers stop by. So there's not the return you enjoy with smaller memes. In trying to make it through the list of posts this week, I only got through two dozen or so, and I can understand why people don't do that: the majority are of no interest. It's discouraging to click and click and click (and my computer does take its time) only to not be interested. So at participant number 112, I can see why not many people make it to mine! Maybe being early in the list makes a difference, but when I saw the new prompt this morning, there were already two dozen posts up, and I hadn't even started to think of what I might write. I saw that some people add their names to the list without even making a Magpie post, like they're just holding their place.

It's also too many participants (at least for me) to be familiar with most of the other members of the group. It's too many to be personal. I guess if I make the effort to go through the whole list, and note whose work I liked, next time I can skip right to them. Some day when it rains all weekend I might do that.

So I don't know. It's not as if I need to be in a club to write stories. But you do kind of need to be in a club to get feedback. We'll see.

Magpie in the window

I was meaning to write a (very) short story for Magpie Tales this weekend, but didn't quite get there. A poem I can pop out in a few days (maybe 10 minutes of writing, but the days & nights spent stewing over it really do count), but stories take several rounds of Oh, yes, that's it!
I've also been meaning to say something about that news article I saw, oh weeks ago now, about Unbaptizing in Belgium. But I couldn't decide what. In my college years it's something I would have gone for. Since then I've made my peace with all that and don't see why everybody else doesn't just do the same. Well, I'm sure they have very good reasons to do what they do.
All that to say, here you have it:

Walking in the echoing evening, a residential quarter of Brussels. Dim light from a large formal house illuminates a robed figure. I pause by the streetlamp, voyeur. The robed figure raises his arms, appears to be leading a ceremony. Half-glimpsed faces watch intently, a cult having its hour. I move on in the growing chill of night, home to where the lights are on strong and no gods lurk in the corners.

.

They are here to be released. I will let them go, though all that binds them is in their own minds. I will raise this bowl and they will sip what is never the blood of the lamb. I will break this bread which is only bread, and share it among fellows in the age-old way of people. I will wash the oil from their foreheads, leaving them clean and whole and belonging to themselves. I will put the scissors in their hands, to cut the ties that strangle.

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I have been so long captive. Caught in thou shalt and thou shalt not. In the name of goodness I was hurt. In the name of love I was violated. In the name of trust I was betrayed. Then I was told to forgive, not prosecute. Jesus loves you. Here, let Father show you how much. It's not enough to leave. Not enough to renounce. Not enough to stand in the witness box at last, though these are all necessary things.

Tonight I am Unbaptized.

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Magpie Bus

It's such a beautiful day out I almost couldn't stand to come indoors and blog. But I did want to post for both the Poetry Bus (driven here by Pure Fiction) and the Magpie Tales (by Willow, here). I haven't done a Magpie in ages (since the matchbox!). But the apple got me going, and I hope in coming weeks to do some short prose. The transition from the squarely summer days of August to the busy packing-up days of September means the garden is full of changes.

It's raining.

It was raining plums for a month, though the carpet bombing of mirabelles

seems to have stopped now.

They tapered off over the weekend and appear to be done for the year.

-However-

-The respite was brief-

It's raining again

It's raining apples no matter how fast I pick them

Dried, sauce, crumbles, pie, eaten right off the tree

Four trees covered

It's going to rain all month and into October.

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Magpie Tales

Here we are for Magpie Tales, a new meme in which we write a story or poem based on a photo posted by Willow at the 'Tales blog. I might be a bit early with this, but the Poetry Bus is leaving today too, and this is the one that's ready already.



How curiously old-fashioned.
Not only were they matches, they were wooden matches.
Not only did they have the name of the hotel proudly on the box, they were free.
Who uses matches anymore in this world of non-smokers, this world of nifty lighters?
How curious.

And yet, they are of a piece with Slovakia, even to their somber black heads.
They extend the continuum of this has-been hotel, trying to keep a foot out of the grave.
They place us in a 1970’s movie, along with the carefully preserved linoleum in the bathroom and the clean polyester bedspread.

Striking crAck!
That unique sulfurous odor mixed with woodiness.
The flame leaping up, illuminating your face for a long second, before dying back down, nearly going out, then living again more modestly.
A trail of smoke lazily disperses. I watch your eyes watching it.

There’s something about striking an old wooden match.
And about traveling to old, second-order cities.
Something to landing in a second-order hotel and having a drink in the bar and a room on the third floor overlooking the grey courtyard. Rooms on the square are 10 euros more.

We’re traveling backward in time, going east.
People are smoking in the lobby,
They have smoked here in our room, reminding us with the lingering odor that we are not the first to take this room, for a night or a week or a lifetime, not the first to look out the grimy windows onto the sunless grey courtyard.
They have generously left us matches, that we may carry on the tradition.