Author Archives: Jo-Anne Teal

Submerge

by

He didn’t glance back before falling forward
Into the still unknown of shocking cobalt.
Crystalline blue.

No one there to fuss or hold him
No one to cry out at just the right moment
Into the midnight afternoon breeze –
Please stay.

For those he’d loved always, eventually
Let go of his hand.
Left him stranded.
Cast away.

And when he realized this, his fate
He’d grieved. Hardened.
Become impenetrable stone.
Then (against even the quirkiest laws of nature)
Frozen to fragile ice, cracked, shattered.

If not submerged within this serene, sharp sapphire
Where else was he meant to be?

Written for dVerse, an ekphrastic poem responding to a work of art. Here that work is a beautifully complex, yet simple, evocative painting by Fay Collins

Zip-line

by

Zippo snaps, sparks the flame,
Essential for this daily tinder routine.

Zig zags contain dusty, seedy remains of
His birthday stash from Lex and Jean.

Dad’s lighter, used over years
Engraving’s worn off and disappeared.

What a crazy old ride from cigar to spliff.

Photo by Evan Phillip on Unsplash

Written for this week’s quadrille prompt on d’Verse: use some form of the word ‘zip’.

A Pitiless Pitstop

by

Erudite Chris James expounds on writing life and the meaning of it all, informed by a recent hospital stay. Thoughtful and beautifully written.

Chris James's blog

Spoiler alert: this post is very wordy.  While I try to be as erudite as usual… *** waits patiently for you to stop laughing*** …this picture of ice frozen into a plant in my garden is the only picture, so you might want to fix yourself a cup of your preferred beverage and settle down for a few minutes with this post, thanks.

Plant1

Fiction writers have a mental exercise to keep their imaginations in good working order, which is this: every time you talk to someone, anyone—the checkout person at your local supermarket, the receptionist at the office you’re visiting, the cab driver taking you to the airport, the doctor uttering the ultimate reassuring line of, “Don’t worry, it’s normal for men of your age,”—you build the background of their lives and write the scripts of their futures.

At first, this exercise requires effort and concentration; after a few…

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Fledgling

by

Fourteen.
My days as dangerous and echoing as a tin with razor sharp edges thrown into the bin.
Then summer. You.
Your free spirit like birdsong, trilled,
Found me, loved me, filled my world to bursting.
Egg shells cracked mosaic-like,
Fledgling life peaked through.

For Monday’s d’Verse Quadrille prompt: Egg

Damage

by

Sinewed hands grab my shoulders, shove me sideways down unfamiliar streets.

Glowing in the distant dark there shimmers a landed mermaid, enchanting, enticing,

Melting in the tarnished silver spoon I wasn’t born with.

Burns my hands. Burns my veins.

Soundless, the world is ash.

44 words (quadrille) for d’Verse. Prompt word: burn

 

Murmurs

by

When he speaks plain truth to himself, not often that is,
He whisper-tells that when he twists door handles, enters,
Rooms chill into icy, stony-silent, thin air.

But his deliberate shuffle awakens low-register murmurs,
Piercing, hot hissed hums.
Air full, no, fat.
Like him.

44 word quadrille for today’s dVerse Pub

Canto

by

Lean down and let me kiss your furrowed brow.
Let me sweep away the shadowy doubts,
Brush them aside with symphonic flourish,
With a lover’s grand, poetic gesture.
An ode to our unparalleled connection,
A canto for the exquisite years we’ve left to be.

44 words for dVerse Pub’s quadrille prompt: poem