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Pocket Poet

Author on Reedsy Prompts since Dec, 2023

Stories (15)

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5 Followers

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15 Stories

114 karma pts

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Cape May

Pocket Poet

I have never understood great American poetsThey talk about the mountainsthe wheatthe cornthe middle of nowhere, a landlocked country that I know not by sense,but by beach reads I bought from the Strand when I was last in the city:Whitman and Walden I am from a peninsula of rivers that with soft rains seethe themselves into quiet swamps,furies that flood valleys, where Poseidon engulfs the land,his turbid waters rise half to the height of hills,and it becomes a country of Charybdis’ keep I am the oceansreflecting myself in the myriad of tide...

0 likes

CHAI【चाय】

Pocket Poet

Submitted to Contest #339

WARNING: MENTIONS OF SEXUAL ASSAULT, HOMOCIDE, GUN VIOLENCE, ALCOHOL, AND GENDERED CURSING My cousin is making chai in the kitchen. I am at the table with my mother. Her husband is sitting in his chair in the darkness of the next room. The television flickers on and a commercial for a new movie is playing on the television. It’s called My Subconscious. It’s coming out soon. The sound of the microwave is humming a song to my loneliness. I want for warmth against my lips. I long for it on these dark month’s cold nights. I’ve never been singl...

6 likes

Agape; or Snow Elephant 【哆；还是雪白象】

Pocket Poet

Submitted to Contest #338

he came from the woodsfive hundred years, the body’s beard, a roaming cloud of the forest floor wanderedeven to its brancheseven in the lightest steps of a cloud dancerhe was the heavy snow that blanketed the harshest wintersbursting the sides of treesuntil in warning the trees barked to their fellows of breaking ranksice weighing down their boughsto bowing the knee before a new emperorlike to inconstant willowswho would pledge their fidelity to any man or season Snow Elephant, they called himthe wandering beast had strayed from a shepherd l...

2 likes

Edmond Dantès

Pocket Poet

Submitted to Contest #338

Fac et spera. I put the book down on the grass beside me. I had laid under the shade of a dead tree’s dream broken and at its end, awoken. My eyes crawled out from the darkness of the tome and into the sunlight. ‘For what?’ I wondered, ‘Have I waited all my life for a good equal to the evils done to me? Will I lie down once and for all and die before I am redeemed by love?’ Bound up like a Maidenhair tree, an innocent cruelly cut down in its first bloom. Some protestor may have tied their life to this tree to save it from the fate of what it...

1 like

WING【翼】

Pocket Poet

Submitted to Contest #335

TW: THIS STORY CONTAINS CURSING AND CONSENSUAL SEXUAL THEMES/REFERENCES •••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••• I run my hands through your hair again. It is so soft that it drives an ache through my heart. I wish my ribs were softer so when my heart thumps against them, they would not hurt so. At least then I would be able to do without that physical pang, pang, panging against my most longed for desire: that I overcome this love for you it causes me a persistent sighing that is near as troublesome as an obstinate coughingwhose root cause is a ...

10 likes

St. Peter

Pocket Poet

Submitted to Contest #330

‘Can dolphins eat earth fruit?’ I wonder as I look down at sea starsat sands more numerous than the starswe are made of the cosmosand we are fashioned after God in the mudand to dust we will all return It is so early that the stars must be sleeping;and I watch the coral blooming in the wilting light of a passing turtle’s eclipse. I swim upward in the dawnand think of the fires of the Wide Sargasso Sea,Mother Earth,Mother Ocean,all the flutter and fury and fire that swims within my breast I miss the weight of the sea every time I leave,but I ...

9 likes

Peaches of Immortality【蟠桃會】

Pocket Poet

Submitted to Contest #330

TW: SWEARING It was amongst the songs of Jupiter,that one day the former vestal virgin laid aside her bow.She thought of an urn that had been placed in a grave;a graveside that had turned to grass;a parched grass that had turned to dust; a traveling dust that loosen its hold on the roots it had laid and turned into desert;and a barren desert that had become rejuvenated earthenwhere the people built huts and cities;and had turned those sands into glass from their caravans’ firesfor which they built bridges that connected cities in trade. She...

6 likes

Dream of the Dream Eater 「貘の夢」

Pocket Poet

I am a unicorn in a lilac wood.I was one of those women living in the waveshalf way between the sea of dreams and the sea of tranquility. On Venus wavesthe sea she beckonswith Charybdis’ kissdon’t be afraid of the sirensthat pass by on the streets at night the red and blue lightsthe blood and blue whirl into one choppy purpleI feel a fin grope my legI twitch the foam is softagainst my facethe cool of a silken pillowI am waiting for someoneand forgot to stay awake I float up to the surfaceand fall back down into Lethe’s cold waters.I am shive...

1 like

Yang Guifei; or, An Ode to Fat Girls’ Beauty

Pocket Poet

TW: SWEARING, MENTIONS OF FAT PHOBIC BULLYING, BULIMIA, SEXUAL VIOLENCE, ETC. 1. 26yrs old I’ve tasted love.You put in my mouth:the juice of fresh lychee,I suck until it cascades down my throat;down my bare,your beloved, well-visited mountainsit runs as refreshing as spring streams;How I could spend all daywatching the dew from the lychees drop! Have they never heard of Yang Guifei? I eat my feelings and I’ve tasted loveMochi-skinned, red bean heart beatChocolate strawberry in between teethsucked in a tongue, locked in a kiss;Selah You hol...

1 like

Mine Hill, NJ

Pocket Poet

“It was a dark and stormy night at an old house, there was a long hallway upstairs with a warped—” “Stop it. I don’t want to listen to something like that while we’re here. My house already makes me feel like someone else is living there. I would rather hear one of those romance stories you’re always reading.” The moon was high and the gravel made a crushing sound under her feet as they walked. He moved closer to her because, in all honesty, stuff like that scared him. She kissed his upper arm. She kissed it again and then gave it one more l...

0 likes

Cassandra

Pocket Poet

He had no shame;Artemis was sleeping deep in the heart of the moonand it was as plain as dayno clouds would come nor rain to her aidno one would blot nor blind himhis light shown so strong, so hot the fire of him, of his vile desire, even from across a barren field, he burned her, her skin turned pink, her body blistered from that heat borrowed from Hadesshe ran near breathlessher feet kicked up sandThat coated her lungs the same as those poor souls who wandered lost in the wake of Pompeii Where were the four winds?Where was Hermes to take h...

1 like

Recollections of the Prince of the Autumn Leaves

Pocket Poet

I returned to the past to come get you; to bring you back with me, back to me.I walked the way beyond time and beyond the gravity that exists further out, that keeps it all moving forward and round and round. I never knew the universe was alive before I walked outside of it. I watch it skipping as I walk by, flashing back and forth between its own memories. It’s trying to remember what happened and what didn’t. I am coming for you.I am going to make it forget you died.Let it choose the false memory where you are still alive. It would look fo...

0 likes

An Early Winter’s Disquiet

Pocket Poet

I awakeIt is still darknessAll around me is a shivering haze of shadowsof whose forms cannot be held to one place nor one solid massMy mind is foggy and I cannot remember what it was I remembered in dreams. A feeling of love married to sleep that fleeted far away at the time of exile that is awakening.I thought I could reach in and pull him out of there; we could lie awake next to one another in the stillness;against each other in the heatMy anxious self, head against his chest, listening to his heart beat My heart hurtsI forget what it was ...

0 likes

A Time When We Are Naught

Pocket Poet

I am already married by the time I don’t meet you. I’ve already broken up with him and several guys before I even meet you. I am living in an apartment in Brooklyn with him and his mates as we’re planning our future. You’re so rough and pushy when we first meet. You shout at people on the street. I’m applying to the UN. You don’t want me to work because you say that we already don’t see each other enough. But I’ve wanted to work there since I was in the first grade and drinking mango juice at my boyfriend’s house while his mom drilled us in ...

0 likes

Firebird and Mourning Dove

Pocket Poet

Submitted to Contest #230

It was the nightshade of trees that seemed to crawl all around her. Like indigo snakes, black dragons that coiled like the world serpent in thick vines of rose fang thorns, she tripped and fell onto the black and blue shadows on the uprooted feet of toppled trees, fallen kings and crowns, flags dragging on the ground, she tripped and fell at the foot of their shadows, bent the knee and rose in dark, moonflowerless night. The nightshade shifted in the wind, slithered on the ground, writhing vines filled with water crawled up even in the nig...

3 likes