CF'S WRITER'S ROUNDTABLE
  • Blog
  • About
  • Contact

Welcome to the roundtable.

Prompt:

1/10/2021

0 Comments

 

Write on the theme of "community". Images to include from the group: gardens, forklift, the subway, a painting, winning a bronze metal in something.

I leave my house in the morning and board my train to work and I wonder who I'm doing it for. The person next to me mumbles an apology when we bump shoulders in the almost-light and I think "yeah, I'm doing it for her". I smile and try to say this without saying it by telling her "no it's totally fine" in a way that's too earnest and too loud and too toothy for the time of day. I say this without saying it by moving over just enough to give her some space but not so much that she thinks I'm offended. I wonder who she's doing it for. I hop off at my stop and run as fast as I can up the steps to exit the subway but not so fast that I fall into the scaffolding and the men in hard hats maneuvering a forklift at the top. I try not to make eye contact with them, and I do that for me. I keep my head down and throw one foot in front of the other until I'm down the block and up the stairs to work and my coat is halfway off before I realize all the lights are off and it's Saturday and I don't work today. I laugh into the empty rooms and they echo and I do that half for me and half for the people I imagine to be there. I don't button my coat back up as I make my way back outside. I head to the city garden where I take my lunch sometimes, but of course it's locked because, of course, it's Saturday. I squint in between the wrought iron bars and wonder if the half-planted bushes know it's Saturday and I wonder who planted them and who they planted them for and what does it mean that they didn't finish the job. I stay there for a while before moseying back to the subway like the home team swimmer who's used to third place. I make it all the way home and wait too long for the elevator and when I decide to take the stairs instead, I'm halfway up the first flight when I see it arrive. I run up the rest of the steps to beat the elevator so I feel better about myself and I wonder if that was for me, too. Two sets of yellow-green eyes wait for me at the door and they get their little salmon treats in an act that is kind of for me but mostly for them. My coat makes it to the rack and I forgive Saturday for coming late.

By Claire-Frances Sullivan
0 Comments

Reciprocity

12/13/2020

0 Comments

 
Picture
I am drowning.
The water leaks into me,
Into my cracks and crevices,
Filling the very heart of me.
I am broken wood,
Paying the price for my weakness,
Water spilling over me like
Water. 
Like blood.


Through the black spots dancing before me,
I see a face, 
A halo of sun.
You are an eclipse.
Through the blue blankness I see
Your hand plunging down,
With the last of my strength, 
I reach up to you. 


Your hand around my wrist,
Water at my ankles like shackles,
Like anchors.
You tug, but I am too much.


Come up, come up, come up for air,
Somewhere beyond t he abyss I can hear you shouting
But I cannot come up for air.


And I have never held your wrist
Like you hold my wrist.
You have never clung to me for life,
So when I slip,
You let me.

By Molly Burdick

0 Comments

Remedies

11/25/2020

0 Comments

 
I can only eat so many walnuts 
to try and heal my heart

I heard walnuts fix the brain
like probiotics
It rewires things. 

But now I'm covered 
in walnuts
have a dry mouth
and
your name is still on my tongue. 

By Amy-Catherine Welch

Picture
0 Comments

November 02nd, 2020

11/2/2020

0 Comments

 
The sun is rising. I know I should get to bed, but I can’t stop thinking about her. I keep replaying our goodbye in my head, the way she kissed me so gently, the way she batted her little eyes. And the way she flew off, perfectly silhouetted against the full moon. It’s only been a few hours, but I miss her. I’ve just been circling the cave since then, picking at the occasional rat, but I don’t have any appetite. The butterflies in my stomach make it hard to eat.
Finally, I give in and head inside. My parents will kill me if I stay out any later. The sky is streaked with fiery red by this point, and my eyelids are getting heavy. I dive into the cave, hoping to slip into my room unnoticed, but it seems like the whole colony is up, blinking at me from their hanging places. It’s easy to pick mom out from the crowd.
“Have fun?” she pings at me sarcastically. I click back nonchalantly and dart under them, into my tiny cavern at the back of the cave. Mom and Leslie follow me, Leslie giggling the whole way.
“What are you laughing at?” I click. “Shouldn’t you be asleep? It’s well into morning.”
Leslie rolls her eyes. “I stayed up for the drama.” She latches onto the ceiling and hangs next to me, grinning innocently. I look to mom in exasperation.
“Walter, we just want to make sure you’re being safe,” she coos. I had almost settled in on the ceiling, and I nearly lose my grip.
“God, mom!” I ping. “Don’t be gross!”
We have a silent hang-off, neither of us blinking. Finally, mom sighs.
“Fine. Just be back by curfew next time.”
I grumpily wrap my wings around myself as she flaps away to rejoin the adults. Leslie starts humming “Here Comes the Bride” next to me, but I swing my wing out and knock her off the ceiling. As a warning. Then, I drift off into dreams of my love.

By Molly Burdick

0 Comments

a series of growth

10/16/2020

0 Comments

 
by Amy-Catherine Welch​

pt 1. (in August)

The rain came down softly on my skin the last time I saw her
a metaphor

All I ever wished for was a cabin in the woods for us to run away together
so I've been looking up flights to Ireland
looking at borders
looking up masks and Hepa filters 
holding on to hope like a thread above me swaying 

Early mornings make me think of her
you...
what is second person third person anyways
except a device 
and a way to remember.

Is it a sin that I just want to abandon my acting career and grow vegetables?
I miss theatre with every fiber of my being.

Maybe I can put on a production of Hamlet, lying under tomatoes and cucumbers 
and I can feel the drama in the rain and shout these stories to neighbors
and through screens
I want to dance loudly here.

pt 2. (in October)

I sit in silence
vines grow in cracks
around the bend

Tiny gardens in a concrete jungle
aching to be wild
but confined by a fence built by man

I want love and wind to sweep me away
to live inside the scarecrows my neighbors put up
to see the world through straw
Will it wash away my fears?
0 Comments

Ruins

10/2/2020

0 Comments

 
The ruins around which we gathered
were smaller than we’d expected.
The photos that
upon a cursory glance
had seemed to express views
from mountain tops
and precarious paths,
had, by generous estimation,
been taken from a stepladder,
or perhaps a milk crate.

What we all came to see,
the central figure
we had thought to be hundreds of feet high
was a stepping
and golden pyramid.
We had all seen it
so often in movies
and documentaries
we could all picture it with our eyes shut.

But what no photo could capture
and what none of us knew to expect,
was the sand.
After we removed our packs
leaving outlines of sweat
on our shoulders and backs,
we kicked off our boots
and peeled off
the thick woolen socks that
would have taken us
up to the precipice
we had planned for,
our toes sank into the silken surface
as into liquid
as we paced around the tiny ruins.

​The pyramid
in reality
came up to my hip.
It was curved,
slouching off to one side
like melting ice cream.
We all looked to each other
dusty toes
and sweaty shoulders
wondering:
Had it changed,
or had we all remembered it wrong?

By Laura McCullagh
0 Comments

Prompt:

9/25/2020

0 Comments

 

"One of your characters is a piece of furniture."

 I used to work for Peewee Herman. In a chair’s world, that’s becoming a god. On the show, Peewee talks to you like he’d talk to a human. You have lines to say in response. Peewee doesn’t talk to you in between filming, but I knew the man loved me like I loved him. Knew. It isn’t until years after the show ends and you stop watching the reruns that you put it all together: I had lines to say, but they weren’t chair lines, they were person lines coming through humanity’s most valuable player: the chair who wanted a seat at the table. You get an ego, think of yourself as a high chair, but every human who ever saw me still assumed I was their salvation should they be tired. My only rescue was having a reserved sign: they don’t sit on me because they’re afraid of disrespecting another human. That’s why I tell people Paul Reubens was just like his character Peewee Herman, because the closest claim I had to autonomy was to be reserved by someone benevolent.
By Maxim Vinogradov

Wildflowers sprout up beneath
The deck chair you loved
Still sitting where you left it


You built this desk with your hands
Its aspen veneer
Peeling and stained with spilled ink


We borrowed the chair
That sits in the living room
Too heavy to move


You built my bed wrong
It’s creaked since its conception
It will creak always
By Molly Burdick

It's been lonely these days, at work. I sit in the corner of the room, waiting for customers to come in. It's hard, though. With COVID. Less people to drink coffee, less people to want to stay awhile. I miss the feeling of it. I miss the gentle scrape of my legs against the floor in anticipation of someone carrying a mug and a book. I miss the pressure in my back when someone finally sits down. Sitting, perched on my sturdy form, talking to someone or working on their laptop. I miss wondering if they'd stay in my embrace for a few minutes, or even hours at a time. I stay here, my rectangular wooden frame pressed back against the wall, wondering when I'll feel the warmth of a soul in my arms again. It could be days, could be longer. So I sit. And wait.
By Claire-Frances Sullivan
0 Comments

Lungs

9/25/2020

0 Comments

 
When first I awakened in the lungs of the Earth
and I first felt the Earth take a breath,
I was not made of matter
one could see or could touch,
but I was thought
that could see and could feel.
So when I awakened in the lungs of the Earth
and I first felt the Earth take a breath,
the lungs expanded, so pink and so clean
and contracted around me again.
Nine hours an inhale
and nine again out
I soon felt a heartbeat join in.
Somewhere within my amorphous self
a beating had decided to start.
Confused, I cried out
with no vocal cords
and the Earth so kindly responded.
She shared her thoughts
and I shared mine
glad for some form of companion.

As I was conscious in the lungs of the Earth
and she was sharing her mind
I began to feel oceans
wash over my surface
in time with the breaths of air.
I could feel the land move
cracking, shifting, shaking, releasing
deep within my depths.
Through the mind of the Earth
I could feel the sun
warming me so kindly as I turned.
I could feel the blanket
of warm air
wrapped tightly, safely
‘round my body.
I could feel, in the lungs of the Earth
something growing
something shaping
something becoming a force of its own.

I am awake in the lungs of the Earth
and I am beginning to take a form.
I don’t know what I am
but I can see what I’m becoming
and so, I think, can the Earth.
She is beginning to fear me
and as I grow eyes
I weep for her demise.
For as I grow a body
like a cancer in her lungs
she has less and less room to breathe.
One day I’ll climb out
wretched, pale, and caked with dirt,
to cast shadows on the ground.
I’ll dive in the oceans,
I’ll stomp up the mountains,
and perhaps take a breath of my own.

By Laura McCullagh
0 Comments

Leave the Light On

9/14/2020

0 Comments

 
Leave the light on
            when you go

I want to see the cluttered desk
I want to see the bed at rest
I want to see the shelves of books
I want to see the hanging hooks
I want to see the empty chair
            [I want to see you sitting there]

Leave the light on
            every night
Just like you used to do 
And pull the shades closed, too
The light inside is you

by Molly Burdick
0 Comments

    Author

    We are a group of multi-disciplinary writer-types who are committed to collective creation. Writing doesn't happen in a vacuum, it happens at a table.

    Archives

    November 2020
    October 2020
    September 2020

    Sort Posts

    All
    Amy Catherine-Welch
    Claire-Frances Sullivan
    Laura McCullagh
    Maxim Vinogradov
    Molly Burdick

    RSS Feed

Powered by Create your own unique website with customizable templates.
  • Blog
  • About
  • Contact