Prompts

This summer I will be posting prompts to the board in order to encourage you to keep writing. Take some time to write to the prompt. If you are a regular TWAP author, you can post directly to the board. If you are new to the group, you are welcome to participate, email your response to us with the piece in the body of the message and after reviewing it, we will post it to our page.

The Rain By: Qoc’avib

I remember when, it rained
on sunny days in the tropics,
Lush, bright, humid, steamy

How, when the rain hit,
It was like,
Invoking avidity for emotions
A poetic ecstasy
Let’s call it, orgasmic

Tell me if you’re feeling me

Euphoria, listening to the rain strike the rooftops
Of the house three doors down…
Two doors…

Next door…

Haaa… I could only bite my lip and release
the muscles tensed inside me as

It hit my open aired shelter
Listening, was the equivalent to a massage
Utterly uplifting, relaxing
To listen to the shower’s raining lead,
pelting the zinc roof up top

Picture a bucketful of water
Never loosening its intensity
Poured slowly, on top of the lean-to

Imagining myself, totally engulfed by the rain
Letting the silky slick drops, saturate my sodden skin,
On that sweaty summer evening

For days and nights on end, the rhythmic cascades wouldn’t stop

Or other times,
The downpour wouldn’t last ten minutes
Not nearly long enough even to raise the dust
from the dirt
Off the street
Let alone convert it to mud

But when it did stop,

It just vanished, like an unfinished sentence. . .

Leaving everyone with this feeling of uncertainty

Glancing over their shoulders
As though they had lost something

But not quite sure what…

Bridges and Air Waves By: Kitty M

Sitting on the sides of bridges
Let's imagine car crashes
We'll sip our kerosene
And take a deep breath
Blue and Yellow balloons
Float over our heads
And their red strings sway with the movement of the wind
Past them lies the sky
Grey and damp
Stained
As if a paint brush carelessly stained a dirty piece of paper
With stiff bristles
Leaving wispy white clouds
Light and feathery
Almost translucent
Look through them at the sky
Little girls
In light blue dresses
On the edge of this vast bridge
Swing their feet
Covered with lacy white socks
And shiny black shoes
Giggles escape little smiles
And pink bows hold playful locks of brown hair in place
A lollipop falls
So does the hand that held it
We see this little girl
Disappear
As here sister sits and waits patiently
For her to emerge from the waters below.

Photo By: Kendra B

The Stone Man By: Samantha P

I have watched the stone man crumble, lying helpless beneath pristine white sheets; silver needles jutting from his arms. Hospitals can’t help a dying man; and this prison of lab coats has yet to bring him any good. I have watched him toss and turn, imprisoned by the fawning clutches of sterile gloves and tangled sheets. I have listened to his groans of agony; pain unseen. His cries reach out into the night, desperate for some stray; yet there is only mine. How can one so noble, so strong, wait so alone for death? When I gaze into his bloodshot eyes, only the devil stares patiently back. And during the longest hours of the opaque night, those most unbearable, I hear him sob her name. Perhaps it is not these scarlet wounds, these tube-like claws, these nameless painkillers that are weathering my mountain, perhaps it is instead the memories of smiling faces, warm love, wedding bells...angry words, and screeching tires. He must know by now of the horror and the sin. She died at his hands, and like any garden statue, my stone, now but a pebble, fears not death but the emptiness of living alone. After all, as grandpa always said; “Hospitals can’t help a dying man; and there isn’t a soul can coax the broken heart to beat...”

Photo by: Kendra Barnes

Statistically Shamed By: Elise N

The syringe in her arm, her love in her veins

Travels through her crimson life and up into her brain.

The lights go dim, her breathing shorts, the floor is coming closer

Hard linoleum meets her face as her friends call her mediocre.

Pictures flash like Polaroid’s through her mind.

She sifts through her distorted memories for there’s one she has to find:

Her father in his chair, his love in his hand,

White powder bags scattered the room as he took his only stand.

Through her childhood that was all she saw to blame.

Everywhere she went statistics said she would turn out the same.

So she thought, “Why not have a ball?

I may as well be high before I eventually fall.”

One experiment led to another, and now her love was her obsession.

Everywhere she looked she had no other possession,

Her friends told her “yes” when her suppressed common sense told her “no.”

She believed there wasn’t any length to which she wouldn’t go.

Now lying on the floor with blood dripping from her eyes

She got her only clear view of her wasted life.

Started, jarred, jerked back to the now,

She awoke out of her first party and the only thought in her mind was “How?”

Her eyes were no longer bloodshot; her arms had no scars;

Her face was still taut, and her teeth were unmarred.

Was this still a dream or was it realistic?

Now that she had her life back,

She’d be damned if she’d be a statistic.

She looked around the room and saw her friends’ love in their hands,

White powder bags scatter the room

As she takes her stand.

Watching her feet as she walks toward the door,

Her love falls from her hand as she vows to become more.