Silver Mirror (Hayden Andipas)
Prompt: Archaic Fragment (Louise Gluck)
Response (Greta Egan)
Plastered layers, A cast
Over my face that wraps up my identity, my feelings
Obscuring the body I see, the body that I materialise
from sight, I feel constricted, the pressure in my head twofolding with the adhesion of more tape
How do I get a handle on this?
Where I once saw the reflection of myself, I now see a glamour of blue
No shape or silhouette.
Sometimes I barely see at all.
Will you please stop blinding me? Will I stop blinding me?
Fireflies (Nathan Fumberger)
Prompt: Blizzard (William Carlos Williams)
Response (Hayden Andipas)
The Furious static fills my head. It tells me to move, go forward,
writhe in silent anger and let the static be your lens.
And then, the light.
At first I saw a solitary glow, just out of reach it floats idly. With no
expectation or purpose the light grows. At first a silent whisper it
builds and grows, bigger, brighter more intense. The light multiplies
its green, blue single then numerous. How long has it been now? A
second or an eternity, it doesn’t matter.
It cuts the static penumbra and brings with it something new…
Hope? Maybe.
And then, as quickly as it began it is gone…
What does the world look like now after the light? I see nothing but
the path ahead of me, lit by the sun and carrying with it something,
something, something.
Perhaps I was never meant to know where the path leads.
Green Matter (Greta Egan)
Prompt: Earth Shakes
Response (Nathan Fumberger)
The emergency was known to the trees.
Acolytes of an old god stood in judgement;
Silent, recording sins on every inch of themselves.
We were a threat to them – we twisted them,
cut, burnt, and bruised them.
Slept in their bones, as they watched us remain.
The climate was felt by the birds.
They were the messengers, the seekers, the remnants
of an old desire to touch the sun, now to fade behind it.
We wielded blades, loved, birthed and named as
we desired – war, blood, extinction.
Paradise, paved by burnt feathers.
The action was begun by the clouds.
Change in the air, the breath of the world
arresting, exhaling, holding, choking.
We saw the gates close to us – our armies
starving and rusted.
Survival watched us stand on our wasteland.
The emergency gripped the world.
Once temples, now threats, the trees
hid the monsters that grew from their blood.
We picked the stones that rained
like fire from the sky and filled them
with coal dust and anger.
The extinction was upon us at last.
The bones, the stars, the land lays cold:
all screaming for our action.
We could not change, return their bones
or their feathers, nor our fear a heartbeat.
Our broken weapons promised our survival.
The end.