Literature DD Roundup: June 2012

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June Literature Daily Deviations

Hello Everyone!

Why is this year moving so fast?

I have received several notes from people asking why we have dropped from 2 DDs a day to just one in Lit (with the exception of Saturday), so I thought perhaps it is worth explaining publically our reasoning.

As you all know, it can be really difficult to find a good  range of Literature deviations that we can feature and trying to find one every single day is a painful task and we would be concerned that the quality of our choices could dip if we pushed ourselves to find one every single day. With just 2 of us now, we have to work harder to find the ones we do. Unlike visual art, we have to spend time reading every single piece we make a decision on and this is time consuming.

If we received more suggestions from the community, we would perhaps consider increasing some days to two, but for now it will remain on one until a third CV joins the team. Please do keep your suggestions coming in!

Thank you

And without further ado, here is a collection of the wonderful writings we featured in June!

Featured by BeccaJS

the things they should have told ussee, no one really warns us about growing up.
they leave out things like heartbreak and gossip and broken people you could have saved but didn't.
it is this: the girl who holds her wrists and sits alone and tells me no child should ever grow up being afraid of someone who should love them. Her eyes are fierce, and something inside me is screaming but the clock ticks and the moment is past. i pretend i can't hear the pieces of her shatter as they hit the floor.
the next time we speak there are new shadows beneath her eyes and her shoulders hunch as if somehow she could fold into herself and disappear. maybe it would be better for us both if she did. but she doesn't. she can't and i can't and outside the sky is robins egg blue but inside a storm is brewing and the hallways smell of regret.
then, she is gone.
murmurs, rumors follow in her wake like dark ripples over stormy water.
she is gone, lost, taken, stolen, dead. in the halls, her name is whispered, softly, fervently, like a
GrapefruitI hold a microcosm in this globe,
heavy on the palm of my hand,
full of regret and heat.
it is heft and heady smell,
the unexpected roundness discovered on the ground
after the season's first rain, a secret shielded
by shining leaves pulled open like wet, wide eyes.
The skin blushes with nervous goose-flesh,
fragrant as a summer promise.
It is the dark light behind your iris,
lemonade on the green porch,
hair stripped by the sun until it is soft and wild.
It holds the flesh of the hot season
tightly beneath its puckered skin
and I knock on the door of its fullness
with my teeth.
We are sharing this summer secret together,
in the gray plant nursery
where the mud sucks your shoes from your feet.
A stooped tree glances at us from the spot
where it burst through a fence,
speckled with moss.
QuaaludesIt’s when you open your mouth to kiss me that I remember what I know about Quaaludes.  The details are all knit up somewhere deep inside a ball of knowledge because I learned about them in fifth grade which seems a little too early in retrospect doesn’t it, and since then I’ve wrapped whole yards of other strands of knowledge around that ball and whenever I want to remember what I know about Quaaludes I have to unravel the whole thing just to get to it.  But it’s there.  One.  They make you tired but it is kind of a verbose tired which sinks you into that three-quarters-down state, the cliff’s edge of sleep, but refuses to push you over.  Two.  They are sort of out of fashion so to get them anymore you have to know the right somebody.  Three.   Hunter S Thompson wrote about them and he is crazy or a genius depending on who you ask but the advocates of the latter say that the fo another notch on the wall.         1.
a while now,
a while now has passed
with bruises crying jagged from your voice
                and pretty little nicks upon
                your memory.
( tricky partners dancing
stiffly
      within your hands cupped around a flame,
for artists draw and
writers scream
           another curse at the bleeding night
           snipping stitches and
           weaving nightmares into weary minds.
                               
carbon monoxideIt had been Javiers idea for the tattoos. "It'll keep you safe, Diego. No one will touch you." On the streets, no one had touched Diego to begin with. In order for Javier to earn the tattoo, he had to steal. When he stole the teenager's purse, she screamed and only chased him for half a block before giving up, but Javier didn't stop running. Back at his friend's apartment, when they opened the Coach bag and dumped out the contents, besides lipstick and a compact mirror, the wallet held cash and credit cards, a little iPod with the headphone cords wrapped around it and most of all, a digital camera. It had been a lucky find, and they'd sold everything but left the camera to Javier, who would use it to take pictures of his brother.
Diego agreed. He agreed because Javier scared him at the best of times. "If you don't get this, you'll die, Diego. Someone will get mad and put a bullet in your head," Javier emphasized this, formed his hand and fingers in the shape of a gun and pressed his fi
Nuclear Winter'Mother, tell me again about the sun.'
She pauses scraping the stretched hide,
thinks. So many images she could give, in words
he wouldn't understand – golden, sunrise, light.
Her son was born to cold darkness, has never seen
the sun, animals in clouds, gods in the midnight sky.
Some days, what she misses most is the sky,
more than electricity, than fresh tomatoes, than sun-
shine. The white tails of planes created scenes
of foreign adventure, when only thunderheads could hide
the horizon and the day produced its own light.
Now the horizon chokes on ash and she on useless words.
She never lets him see her cry when her words
become ghosts, unable to puncture the thick sky
and rest peacefully. She has nightmares about the light
from each subatomic explosion that burnt out the sun,
and she's haunted by a notion that there's nowhere to hide,
nowhere to run from the nuclear eyes of God and not be seen.
Before the years of winter, she and his father had seen
mankind linked with hopeful
The Wind by mel-face WaitingWaiting
Pale willow girls wait by the river, brides of the water,
Guppies swim through their veins, silver darts of bright pain.
Their names are hieroglyphs of mist, frost and rain.
They walk barefoot in the snow, leaving tracks so they know the way back,
A tracery of breadcrumbs that the ravens will never eat.
Twelve princesses slip underground,
Dance in slippers of tattered frayed silk,
Corkscrews of ribbon, stiff with blood and melted tallow.
They inject themselves with music until their eyes hum like bumble bees.
Then they sleepwalk through the day in a haze of yearning
For fierce wet stone beneath their frenzy of feet, of bones.
When they kiss they taste blood.
They taste honeyed tears.
The brides walk by blank storefronts, by scraps of words,
"Joe's Dry Cleaners", "Nick loves Alicia", "Please, oh please".
The town huddles waiting for checks, food stamps and jobs,
In a boarded up movie palace, the wood charred by some great fire
Black as the ravens that feed Elijah rice,
A preache
Under A Gibbous MoonIt was a dark evening, the light of a starkly gibbous moon shone ominously onto a lone Arkham building. A place rooted firmly into one of the more undesirable districts of that cursed city. The light trickled through into its Georgian interior, as if afraid of the dancing shadows it threw forward like devilish spectres. The pointed ears and peaked form of something alien to the world were cast darkly onto Howard Phillip Lovecraft by the softly tortured light. He sat reading the "The Cask of Amontillado", muttering to himself, strange musings punctuated by the curling of his lips. The cat's shadow disappeared and the scene seemed twisted for a moment, silent but for the screams of another world that could be heard echoing in the dark circuitous passageways of his mind.  
Lovecraft stared stoically at the aged paper before him, pensive as he ignored this all too familiar experience.  He closed the book, self indulgent self hatred and adoration of his erstwhile peer an

:thumb303329614: THAT POEM (Writer's Block)I sat down at my computer last Thursday night
with the full intention of writing THAT POEM. Oh, don't
play dumb. You know what THAT POEM is. We all know
what THAT POEM is. You with the cigarette train-tracks
charting your eternal drift to nowhere
on the insides of your arms, you
with the sludge of alcohol dripping thick & brown through
veins swollen & slow & pussy as zombies, you
with the eight children whose faces you can't remember
& the husband in the Hamptons whose name you sometimes forget
& the lover who never seems to come around as much as you pay him to – you
all know what THAT POEM
is. It's the rhythm beating a dull staccato in your skull
when you've taken something to take the edge off, the weary shadows sinking senseless
into the black-slung cradles hiding underneath your
bloodshot eyes. It's the weight of the gun & the way its metal feels
when you push it against the squelching skin of your skull – not to kill yourself, just to feel it,
to know you could. This wa
Creationism     She took the clay into her hands and rolled it around. If she closed her eyes and concentrated, she could feel the imperfections in the little sphere, but she would never think to smooth them out. It was the little things that gave each of her creations character.
     This particular ball gave way to spiky tips and deep depressions. She held it up and blew on it to speed its drying. When it was ready, she brought out the paints. The low parts became blue and fluid, and the spiky places turned gray. But she didn't stop there. The in between places were painted green and brown, and she came away a little and painted white puffy shapes. And then she waited.
     For a long time, nothing happened. Then there was movement, but still she was disappointed. This one didn't glow the way some of her creations did. She moved in for a closer look at the globe. Perhaps she could figure out what had gone wrong.
 
THE UNDERWEAR MAN"Hello?"
"Hi, my name is Buddy and I'm a representative of Smith & Winston Enterprises. We're a company that conducts surveys geared towards females and feminine products. Do you have the time right now to participate in a short survey, miss?"
The voice at the other end was steady and professional. I, too, work for a company that makes phone solicitations, so I immediately sympathized with the guy, figuring he had goals to meet and people to please. They probably wouldn't let him go home until he reached a certain participation percentage or something of the sort.
"Sure, Buddy, question away."
"Great! Thanks. How old are you?"
"Twenty."
"Okay, and what brand of underwear do you wear?"
"Victoria's Secret."
Poor guy. It takes a brave male soul to call up women and ask them about their underwear. I figured this job must have been his last resort. Perhaps he was laid off at his other job and had children to feed.
"What size?"
"Extra-small."
"Exactly what kind of underwear is it? Tho
:thumb284330071:

Mature Content

Featured by thorns

Tale 2: Worlds in the AtticHe was very old by now. His long, white hair, uncut for fifteen years, was loosely spread all over the back of his coat. His shoulders were brought forward by age, his fingers weren't as deft as they had been. If there was one thing he was very happy for, it was that when he had started, he had used the higher shelves first. It meant he didn't have to climb steep, uncertain ladders all the time now.
There were hundreds, thousands of jars and bottles and little tin boxes neatly stacked on the shelves, hung from the ceiling by thin chains or ropes, some small and precious glass containers brought together by ropes hanging from the ceiling like clusters of grapes or braided into garlic-like strands.
The man had wanted to be a writer, or a sculptor, or a painter, or some other sort of artist that could show all the worlds that lived inside people. A long time ago, he had understood the fact that he had no talent. It didn't affect him now. He was content to be nothing else but a keeper of w
The Maxberg Archaeopteryx
I waited in a tiny house without a light or door,
That each progressing day was slightly smaller than before,
Until I felt the sudden urge to break and struggle free.
I came into the world in only natal feathers dressed,
Among my likewise siblings in an interwoven nest,
Atop a shrub amid a land surrounded by the sea.
Each day my father came to us with smaller lives to eat,
As slowly I grew larger and my feathers more complete.
Along my longest finger formed a broad and glossy wing.
With wings to press me forward I could climb an upright wall,
And now the nest where I had dwelt was also strangely small,
And I could not ignore the larger island's beckoning.
My wings had grown sufficient to support my weight in air,
And prey could now be chased and won without my father's care.
Observing my lagoon-encircled kingdom from above,
Another hunger came to me beyond the quest for food,
To recreate on my behalf my natal nest and brood,
And prove to a companion my deserving of her love.
For every
:thumb303892934: fireflies in trainingonce upon a time
i met a magpie
hatched in a nest of thieves
you might think this will be a tale
about how she grew up
turning story pages
and realized her brothers and sisters
were villains
as well as herself
and then she shifted
from evil to good
alas, but no
i came to her with a necklace
which she snatched in her beak
not to mention my wallet
and flew away
to share with her mafia family
but when she arrived at the nest
all she knew was
gone
looking for what was lost
she flew across the globe
with jewelry rattling around her neck
she sat on the peak of the eiffel tower
soared together with soap bubbles in poland
was shot by a soft gun in japan
but nursed by a cup of tea
while i collected fireflies
in an empty jar
so i trained my jar of lit insects
to fly upside down
from her to me
we met again
and i complimented her necklace
she told me
«i have returned from a journey
i lost a leg
i saw the world
for what it is
birds sang about you
i learnt how you plucked
every egg of my famil
Let Me Down GentlyI never said I was an angel,
rather,
I'm a feather on its wing,
so when you let me drift
on the next western current,
let me fall slowly down,
d
   r
     i
       f
         t
           i
             n
                g.
I promise I'll land softly,
though you will not find me
where you left me.
etch-a-sketchhe wrote his suicide note on an etch-a-sketch board.
elmo-red frame, golden paint drawing out the classy cursive logo, white bottle-cap knobs, and a fake digital screen.
a child's dream.
it took him six hours to revisit his childhood for the last time.
[it didn't take that long because he didn't know what to say, but because he wanted to finally do something right.]
he carefully turned each knob, forming darkened pixels into letters, letters into words, and words into spider-silk-thin sentences that would rip and fade, just as spider webs did.
his words faded a bit when you accidentally knocked it off his dresser so you could take it to the funeral.
faded a bit when you went over that speed bump on the road and the little board bounced around a bit in the car.
faded a bit when you walked over to his open casket and dropped it next to his mortician-treated body.
faded a bit when the mini-crane dropped the casket into the grave just a moment too early, and so the death-box shook like a f
Undressing PoetryShe clothes herself in poetry,
seals her skin within the verse.
Each line becomes another garment
that conceals her fixed form's curvature,
but peels away when read.
Last night I dissected a stanza,
clamped it tight between my teeth
and tugged it down her legs.
Her body breathes warm and sweet,
speckled red like a summer strawberry field.
I sucked the juice from her lines and
spit the punctuation like seeds.
My lips mouthed the shape of her words
as my skin grew more sticky with
every splash of imagery dripping down my chin.
I peeled apart her soft pages
with sticky, pink fingertips that left them
clinging to my skin.
A single flawless line remained
between the cloak of poetry, her and me,
so we spoke the words in unison,
revealing everything and setting her verse free.
Observation
You just need focus,
the tree is the simpler task.
From humanity
One must expect blurred edges,
truth inferred rather than seen.

:thumb305434589: Gamer.So, you want to
Try again?
Each time
Life count drops
The sweaty buttons
Sticky under practised
Fingers.
Click click click.
Level up.
Moving on. Blood
Pumping, pounding.
Rounding corners
Juddering lights
Swatting away the
Opposition.
Bang bang bang.
Level complete.
Fuzzy pixels swarming
Forming the tiny person
Character. You.
A twisting maze of
False reality.
It's safe here.
Would you like to Save?
[Yes]
lessYour phone bills are smaller now,
with no long distance calls to make,
and your car insurance reduced to reflect lower mileage
and all those journeys not made, those roads not taken,
those lanes that you know like the back of your hand -
Left, right, straight ahead, right, right -
are no longer driven.  You did not see the bluebells wake
and spring burst forth in the countryside,
did not see the snow on the fields, cold horses in their  
quilted coats pawing, nibbling, pawing.
Christmas stamps still tucked in your wallet,
unused,
and fountain pens dried up next to watermarked
John Lewis writing paper
with no letters left to write.
Weekends stretch out, lunchbreak is a blank and you have more time
but you have less.
Ashen Sky-Ch.1 Revised"I always knew the zombie apocalypse would start in Chicago. I just never thought the zombies would be trying to buy life insurance." Matt Owens chuckled as he glanced over his shoulder to his cubicle-mate.
Tess Abernathy rolled her large blue eyes at him and sighed. "As much as I absolutely adore my job in data-entry here," she began, her voice dripping with sarcasm, "I love your amazing ability to come up with the stupidest ideas ever even more."
"Aw, c'mon, Tess!" said Matt, laughing. "Seriously, though. I had to look this guy up 'cause his address was wrong, and the database says he died at an old address about a month ago, but he's alive at a new address now. Weird, isn't it?"
Tess rolled her eyes again. This was common practice when it came to Matt. "He was probably trying to jump rent or evade taxes or something," she dismissed, glancing at Matt's work before frowning and turning back to her own pair of screens. "Matt, you're doing that thing with your finger again. Would
cwe're traveling
    at the speed of light
and we won't stop for nothing
           (there are no br(e)akes
           in this vehicle called life)
so let's keep going until we can
     reach the far edges of the universe
     where the blackness seeps into your skin and
     you passed the last star a couple thousand
                                          light years ago;
and return home to each other as
    old folks who've aged nothing but
       gained knowledge of all the
            mousetraps of the cosmos
   &
Bob's Tattoo and GroceryGraveyard shift sucks. That's it, it sucks, no two ways about it, no making lemonade from those lemons, graveyard shift is a soul-sucking, mind-sapping experience that only the rare person who gets off on misery can enjoy. Naturally, it was the only type of work I could find for my summer vacation.
The local grocery store, Bob's Discount Tattoo and Grocery, had decided to start offering twenty-four hour service to the strange folk who need to buy a gallon of milk or a carton of cigarettes at 3 o'clock in the morning. They needed brave young men and women to man the front lines of the night shift, and, needing a reason to get out of the house during the summer, I applied and was fortunate enough to be hired. It didn't take me long to realize that work sucks almost as bad as being unemployed.
You see, for the earlier part of the evening, we have a few people here and there who come in for the aforementioned odd item, people who for whatever reason just couldn't wait until daylight to pur
SW: To Whom it May ConcernPrince on vacation.  
Rescued myself.
- Princess

Our wonderful suggestors!

Again many thanks to EVERYONE who suggested DDs, but here are those whose suggested pieces were featured this month!

inknalcohol raspil TheSkaBoss Mousenibbles DailyLitDeviations STelari LadyofGaerdon SadisticIceCream UnspecifiedUnknown LiliWrites xlntwtch rose-from-the-ashes ikazon QuiEstInLiteris vespera CarmenVeloso vespera Kaoyux SilverInkblot Mrs-Freestar-Bul ChimeraDragonfang WritersInk EWilloughby

 

Tigger and Coconut Suggestion Guidlines

FAQ #61: What is a Daily Deviation?
FAQ #18: Who selects Daily Deviations and how are they chosen?
FAQ #873: What do I do when I disapprove of a Daily Deviation feature?

(Updated)DD suggestion guidelines!Hello all
Firstly, I would like to say I am truly grateful for every DD suggestion I receive. It makes me feel reassured that the pieces featured are community decisions, not just my own subjective thoughts and findings. There are millions of writings out there and I can’t see every single one. I rely on good spots of others in hope of continuing to share a variety of good quality and unique literature. Thank you to those who suggest and those who continue to make the time to share their findings.
Please note
:bulletblack: I prefer 1 DD suggestion per note.
:bulletblack: Please always try to tell me why you are suggesting this piece. A bit of enthusiasm from the suggester can help make me feel enthused about the piece too. Plus it helps add a description to the DD :)
   

What I look for in Daily Deviations
:bulletblue: For those who know me as a writer, you will know I write
DD Suggestion GuidelinesLiterature Community Volunteers
BeccaJS | thorns
Why Suggest?
Part of being a Community Volunteer is featuring wonderful deviations as Daily Deviations, but the keyword is community. I need you guys, the community, to tell me what you like to read. Share your favorite stories and scribbles with the rest of the community by suggesting it for a feature. If you adored it, share it with us! :la:
Instructions
Send your suggestion link/thumbnail to me in a note with the subject "DD Suggestion" please! I encourage you to send multiple suggestions, but be sure to only send one per note. That way I won't get confused and can organize them.
It would be marvelous if you could tell me why you think the deviation should be featured. I want to feel your enthusiasm to I can get excited about the piece too!
Please note, I will thank you for the suggestion, but won't tell you if it will be featured beforehand. It's more fun wh



© 2012 - 2024 BeccaJS
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LiliWrites's avatar
Awesome. I shall have a fun day of reading. :reading: