Editors Note
“Winter Birth” by Jenny Middleton
(3Elements—Poetry)
“Lies” by Jenny Middleton
(Rattle’s Ekphrastic Challenge—Poetry)
“The Feral Parrots of North Park” by LC Stone
(3Elements—Poetry)
“Before the Wind Arrives” by C Massar
(Notebooking Daily—Microfiction)
Winter Birth
That winter
the labour-ward
giddied with Entonox,
each breath a tubed loop running
from cylinder to mask to mouth,
tethering minutes to its gaseous flairs.
Thinning dawn’s contractions to ghosts
and dilating them with a new sky
grown from set bones.
Birth is
all slippery flowers;
hibiscus, blood-red-sweet
and sub-tropical, stemming
from the warm tides
of rooted continents
to a harbour of gentle arms.
Flesh, bright with arias of pain
suck sopranos inside singing,
self-circling bleeding note
to fledging note.
While an infant
lies gentle in a crib,
flushed with first breath,
rose-mallow soft.
by Jenny Middleton
Jenny Middleton has written poetry throughout her life; some is published in printed anthologies or on online poetry sites. Jenny is a working mum, she taught English at high school for many years before having children. She lives in London with her husband, two children and two very lovely, crazy cats. You can read more of her poems at her website https://www.jmiddletonpoems.com.
NEXT PIECE: “Lies” by Jenny Middleton
On This Piece
This sonnet was written in response to social media’s spread of misinformation that so many people seem so keen to believe.
This piece was sparked by the prompt for 3Elements Issue 29: Loop, Ghost, Hibiscus.
If you would like to nominate this piece for our year-end Reader’s Choice Award click here and donate. $1 = nomination
Please do not forget to mention the piece you’re nominating. To learn more about the award click here, but in short, the piece with the most $1 nominations at the end of the year will get half of the donated money, receive 20 copies of a limited edition broadside designed for their piece and have their post pinned to the front of the website for all of December. This is one of the only ways we raise money for the magazine in order to pay all of our wonderful writers and keep this lights on here at Sparked.
Lies
See, lies are like that fifth tequila shot
shooting to the brain and jig-sawing true
perceptions to off-cut chaff, held in lieu
and replacing the real with a garotte
of cutting wires, unable to unknot
the fictive from the living, breathing hue
of experience. And despite those who
try to stop you sucking up old, dead rot
you continue, drunk in your set dogmas
and swaggeringly order another round,
although your heavy head and loose jaw’s slump
is at last queasy with chat and stigmas
that float grey as gas to choke and astound
your own throat with an asphyxiating lump.
by Jenny Middleton
Jenny Middleton has written poetry throughout her life; some is published in printed anthologies or on online poetry sites. Jenny is a working mum, she taught English at high school for many years before having children. She lives in London with her husband, two children and two very lovely, crazy cats. You can read more of her poems at her website https://www.jmiddletonpoems.com.
NEXT PIECE: “The Wild Parrots of North Park” by LC Stone
On This Piece
Lies, a Petrarchan Sonnet, was written in response to Rattle’s Ekphrastic Challenge October 2019 in response to the image ‘Brainyo’ by Dana St Mary
If you would like to nominate this piece for our year-end Reader’s Choice Award click here and donate. $1 = nomination
Please do not forget to mention the piece you’re nominating. To learn more about the award click here, but in short, the piece with the most $1 nominations at the end of the year will get half of the donated money, receive 20 copies of a limited edition broadside designed for their piece and have their post pinned to the front of the website for all of December. This is one of the only ways we raise money for the magazine in order to pay all of our wonderful writers and keep this lights on here at Sparked.
The Wild Parrots of North Park
are only one of a handful of feral
parrot populations that dot
the California coast like lobes
of rainforest atmosphere for
the few lucky beach bums still
surfing on the halflife of a trust
fund and the house their parents
gave them so while they were
fresh freshman on campus, they
had a safe place to call home.
The birds each shared their own
vocabularies learned from one
exotic pet owner or another, so
when squawks aren’t echoing
off the Priuses and F-150s, the
chorus of Scarface impersonations
and Jimmy Buffet hooks cackle
from seemingly nowhere which is
at the same time funny and ominous.
by LC Stone
LC Stone is a writer living in Carlsbad, California. He writes about the beach and animals mostly, and his work has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize.
NEXT PIECE: “Before the Wind Arrives” by C Massar
On Writing Prompts
I really enjoy the prompts at Notebooking Daily, they’re open-ended, work for both poetry and fiction and by reminding you so frequently not to stare at the screen not typing, trying to find the perfect words, you end up with a completed draft immediately, and it’s often a much better draft than you’d think. Without trying to keep myself to a time limit I tend to get half-written pieces that never go anywhere.
This piece was sparked by the prompt for 3Elements Issue 27: Lobe, Parrot, Halflife.
If you would like to nominate this piece for our year-end Reader’s Choice Award click here and donate. $1 = nomination
Please do not forget to mention the piece you’re nominating. To learn more about the award click here, but in short, the piece with the most $1 nominations at the end of the year will get half of the donated money, receive 20 copies of a limited edition broadside designed for their piece and have their post pinned to the front of the website for all of December. This is one of the only ways we raise money for the magazine in order to pay all of our wonderful writers and keep this lights on here at Sparked.
Before the Wind Arrives
You can taste it in the air—some mix of ozone and dirt. Old John says he feels it in his knees, and there might be something to that because he’s not once been caught by a storm out fishing on the lake. He did once eat his daughter’s birthday cake sloshed on rye, but those were different days. Every so often a new batch of folks get their turn to croon that old tune. To complain about the youth, the powers that be, the weather. These hundred-year storms that keep popping up every other year.
by C. Massar
C. Massar is the author of two science fiction books and knows a thing or two about installing windows. He lives outside of Topeka with three cats and the mule Ted.
NEXT PIECE: Nope. Not until next month.
On This Piece
There’s something to the idea that you can feel the weather in your ‘bones’ or joints. It’s nothing mystical of course, but I’ve always been fascinated by that idea, and when I saw the title for that day’s prompt at Notebooking Daily I knew exactly what to write.
This piece was sparked by the Notebooking Daily prompt for 2020 Writing Exercise Series #346: Title Mania Plus 54, which was to use the title the piece has.
If you would like to nominate this piece for our year-end Reader’s Choice Award click here and donate. $1 = nomination
Please do not forget to mention the piece you’re nominating. To learn more about the award click here, but in short, the piece with the most $1 nominations at the end of the year will get half of the donated money, receive 20 copies of a limited edition broadside designed for their piece and have their post pinned to the front of the website for all of December. This is one of the only ways we raise money for the magazine in order to pay all of our wonderful writers and keep this lights on here at Sparked.
Editor’s Note:
It has been a crazy ride the last year and a half and there’s no signs of slowing. Instead of random days having new pieces published, we’ve switched to a monthly issue schedule. Some months there will be just a couple pieces, others there will be a handful, it all depends on how many awesome submissions that we get. I have been really enjoying the submissions that have been coming in, so while the volume is a bit lower than I’d originally received, there has been some really high quality writing coming in. As the community is still small, we’re shuffling our submission guidelines so that you may now submit as soon as you hear a response from us. Keep those submissions coming. Keep prompting, keep generating.