Tag Archives: #FOWC

Familial Disapproval

6 Replies

Familial Disapproval

When he swears when the champagne cork hits him in the eye,
my brother’s new fiancee utters a “My, my!”
then swipes the bubbles from her upper lip with  polite tongue.
(She’s squeamish about swear words and she calls the cork a “bung.”)

Her brow furls with referrals to anything unsavory.
(She prefers her history minus genocide or slavery.)
“If you can’t say something good, then don’t say anything at all.”
she says, and then says little but “Oh, really?” and “Y’all!!!”

She’s a proper southern girl with mild disposition.
She would not think to put you out or cause an imposition,
yet when I ask if she is hungry, she admits, “Yes, just a bit,”
and when I put the tea cake out, she eats three-fourths of it!

She never wastes her precious time when visiting by sitting
and conversing with the family. Instead, she brings her knitting,
and bottom lip between her teeth, she counts her knit and pearling.
concentrating on her knitting needles’ rhythmic twirling. 

You might surmise she’s not my favorite, or second, third or fourth
girlfriend he has brought home from East and West and North.
This Southern girl sticks in my craw, I just cannot get used to her.
And you can bet I’m dreading the day my bro’ gets fused to her.

Prompt words on this Solstice morning are: hunger, disposition, squeamish, bung, referral and knitting.

Excessive Angst

4 Replies

Excessive Angst

He suffers not from nuance. His moods are all too blatant.
He bares his anger to display a violence once latent.

His colossal fits of rage reveal that he abhors me.
His reputation slips a notch, and in the end, he bores me.

 

Prompts today are colossal, display, reputation, bare and nuances.Image by Alessandro Bellone on Unsplash

A Cherry Perfect Birthday

5 Replies

A Cherry Perfect Birthday

Tomorrow we will celebrate my sixth year jubilee
with a little party just for my family.
Grandma’s going to catentate
cherries and lard and flour
and add a bit of sugar to make the fruit less sour,
then proceed to put it in the oven to cook up
into my favorite cherry pie upon which we will sup.
Thus will fruit and grain and fat conspire to create
a birthday treat the thoughts of which make me salivate.
Birds may like cherries in the wild directly off the tree,
but baked into my grandma’s pie tastes way better to me!!!!

Prompts for today are: jubilee, proceed, pastry, catenate (to join together), bird and grain.

Pink Lights and Tequila

2 Replies

Pink Lights and Tequila

She met him in a barroom. His first contact was a wink,
and their time of courtship was over in a blink.
She didn’t note his platitudes and chauvinistic thinking.
That’s what comes from being wooed when a girl’s been drinking.
The impact of tequila shots has done in more than one girl,
making one who’s ordinary seem to be a fun girl.

A current ran between them. Rainbows issued from the lights,
giving a pink glow to cheeks and lower sights.
Thus did soft lights and alcohol add to their delight.
She seemed to him a princess. He seemed to be her knight.
They wed just six months later and divorced within a year.
Sparks ignited in the tavern fizzle out in life, I fear.

Prompts today are rainbow, impact, platitude, current, chauvinist and pink.

Culinary Taboos

23 Replies

Culinary Taboos

Hot dogs, tacos, ham on rye
are the ways that I get by.
I don’t like caviar on toast,
and what I really hate the most
are liver, tripe or heart or brains.
These are the things my taste disdains.
I cannot masticate and eat
These things that, think, digest or beat.
The height of what my mouth deplores,
they’re  what my stomach most deplores.
And it has never been my habit
to eat lamb or veal or rabbit,
possibly because it gets
me thinking about former pets
and liaisons with baby creatures
that were very frequent features
in a childhood wherein we
sheltered a menagerie
of magpies, bunnies, kittens, rabbits
that fulfilled my parents’ habits
to collect those orphaned things
that often life presents and brings
to those who notice what is needed
by those abandoned or defeated..
Zippy, Fluffy, Tiger, Poo
were the names of just a few
babies that became our peers
within our formative years,
which is  why I still dispute
eating things so young and cute.
But reasons that I do not eat
any fish or organ meat? 
The answer is succinct and easy.
They just simply make me queazy!

True story? Yes, we really did have a baby raccoon named Zippy and all of these other orphaned animals brought home from the ranch by my father and raised like her own kids by my mother.
And yes, this poem rambles a bit, but for Pete’s sake, look at the prompt words!! Not complaining, just explaining….And that is Zippy up there as an illustration not of a possible cuisine choice, but he was one of our orphaned animal adoptees.

Prompts today are zippy, possible, rye, liaison, height and shelter.

Headline News

23 Replies


Headline News

I think for a week or two that I will remain
tucked away within the walls of my own domain.
That I made the headlines was flattering, more or less,
but the fact that I’ve turned sexy was a misprint, you might guess.
Still, so many have indulged their need for jokes at my expense
that I have had to seize this means to come to my defense.
Though my physical condition is healthy, fit and agile,
I find my sense of humor is becoming rather fragile.

It is “sixty” I turned yesterday, not “sexy” as reported.
Years have passed since I was so venereally comported.
My past generosity in spreading love around
I left back in the sixties and since then I have found
that piety becomes me, so I’ve trod another path,
thus, you’ll understand my embarrassment and wrath
at what some find as funny and so I took the action
of insisting that the paper issue a retraction.

But the form of their retraction, I must say, I found unkind.
The headline I’m not sexy was not what I had in mind.

Prompts today are.: domain,  indulge, agile, misprint and  generous,   Image by Ivan Aleksic on Unsplash.

Fleeced and Avenged

4 Replies

Fleeced and Avenged

When first my antagonist burst upon the scene,
he was an enterprising human sales machine.
I was his favorite client, an accomplishment for sure—
innocent and gullible and open to the lure.
I had little experience foreshadowing the end.
No idea at all what lay waiting ’round the bend.
But I fear his achievement was unduly brief,
because Daddy called the sheriff, declaring him a thief.
Now he’s living in the jailhouse and his board and room is free.
He’s living on the county now—not on little old me!

 

Today’s prompts are achievement, foreshadow, antagonist, enterprise, burst and accomplishment.  Image from Pinterest.

Undertow

5 Replies

Undertow

Dreams conflate reality, making it surreal—
blend present, past and future until they all congeal.
Therein we twist reality into a tangled fray
that’s lived at night but vanishes in the light of day.

We blunder through their memory, half knowing what is real,
trying to sort out whether we know or sense or feel.
If we could just replay them like a picture show,
we might bring to the surface their mysterious undertow.

 

Prompts today are: only, twist, blunder, vanish and conflate.

Grandpa’s Solo Visits

13 Replies


Grandpa’s Solo Visits

It’s mysterious how the volume of our cereal goes down
whenever Grandpa chooses to visit in our town.
Without Grandma’s influence, his willpower is zilch
and so he takes this opportunity to filch
our Coco Puffs and Captain Crunch and other cereal,
for he likes a little crackling in his morning meal
along with all the sugar, ‘cuz he swears it puts some zip
in his faltering “get-along” and soothes his aching hip.
None of us tell Grandma, because once he has his fill,
when we all go out for ice cream, Grandpa picks up the bill!!!!

Prompts today are: volume, cereal, mysterious, filch, influence and crackling. Before you ask, this is pure fiction. Sadly, I never had a grandpa. They both died before I was born. If I’d had one, though, I wish he’d been like this grandpa.

No Pattern

10 Replies

No Pattern

To placate her parents, they said that she’d improve.
With praxis and time’s passage, she would slip into the groove.
They said that she would blossom like all the other girls,
subscribe to dolls and ruffles, to lipstick and to curls.
But she remained mysterious, preferring other things.
She asked for cars and baseballs instead of pretty rings.
She didn’t set the table or ask to dry the dishes.
To help her dad cut firewood fell more within her wishes.
No formula they set for her worked out for her because
stubbornly and true to self, she turned out who she was!

Prompt words are placate, subscribe, mysterious, praxis, table and blossom. Image by Reeney Jenkins on Unsplash.