That bloody quickening.

Poetry by a pinehutch (I was almost Molly.) Icon from the piccrew by @ummmmandy because I also like fun.

[smallepics]

Lau B.

@nosebleedclub Poetry Month Prompts 04.11.25

TEXT ID

xii. pipe tobacco

im still impertinent /

ginseng

falling out of your pond

flushed early summer thick with

rain, gathering all night

in harmony wooden chimes

sweet tobacco leaf

kicking up your garden

late summer harvest

turning my roots over

laid out, peeling wood

my back to the sun

soft grassy spots on your liver

above your waist

scold me one more time /

purple my thumb on your teeth

[poetrex]

How to write a poem:

Put ‘poem’ in the ADDRESS line; SUBJECT re: Silence as the negative space in a visual medium. Say: poem, I hope this finds you on the tip of my tongue, drinking in the shade of what you planted there, hanging on my every word. Say: poem, I am yours truly till the sun explodes in blue-green light, then picture them affixing to a postcard the stamp of every dream you have forgotten.

[almostmolly]

[almostmolly]

DOG HAVE I NEVER

Dog       have I never owned you but       been owned

been walked six times a day been shown

      miracles of rot and sidewalk       and grass that was yours

      and pigeons and fallen feathers       that dead sparrow

wild onion, oleander, sharps all healthy animal drive

gimme nasopharyngeal bliss! the dive for poison

      the safe hand pulling you back       the safe hand pulling you back

been dragged into winter and made to look at it

(in spring petals fall and dissolve soft pink and slimy             tender as tongues)

and love I've thrown the ball and        thrown the ball     and              thrown    the       ball every day caught in your jaw every raucous smelly glittering damned day thrown a ball

      to your eternal debuts       your non-stop

      dog with a       your       bare-boned     fresh starts

dawn keeps happening. the universe explodes and you at the centre of it

all stunning and fundamental gravity asleep on my chest

      your ten-ton promise that we will be here tomorrow

  the sky with its stars       the stars             buried beneath the mist still howls sometimes

but N-O-T Y-E-T I spell out             L-I-V-I-N-G and hands home heart full of vital stink run the vacuum

[nosebleedclub]

March Prompts

1. Blossoming hope

2. Righteousness

3. Misguided

4. But-

5. Drive up the hill

6. Injured fawn

7. Persnickety

8. The boy who was always there

9. Day after your birthday

10. Viscera

11. Rumored lover

12. Tribute

13. College academic advisor

14. When we drove through the rain

15. Detente

16. Mentor

17. Baby powder

18. Owlet

19. Latte

20. Various theories

21. Clamber

22. Court case

23. Parasitic plant

24. Old shoes

25. DNA

26. Before us

27. Intensive care unit

28. Nun

29. Auto shop

30. Warm days with you

31. Chirp

[almostmolly]

[almostmolly]

HEATWAVE IN THE ANTHROPOCENE

There is no sudden storm, no breaking. 

What happens: 

the sun shines, and shines, and no more green-springing grows the grass

(though: fuck grass. Let me baby my tomatoes instead, baby,

watch me water-bearing, bare-armed and gallon-gallant, freckling for fruit; for the gift made to the tooth). 

Keep reading

[almostmolly]

Screenshots because tumblr mobile formatting was stressing me out:

[almostmolly]

[nevershootamockingbird]

[ begin id: black text against white background.  “WISHLIST

Seawater, two bodies’-displacement-worth; clean socks; the stars up north.

A sharp tongue, salt-sparkling and quenching-wet; cups running over with snow melt; the sun setting in whisky.

The blush that hurls the heart towards the world, and petals as pink, and all rich red things on clear days, and blackbirds.

That every shirt in the wardrobe’s the favourite. To learn a secret song from a cherry tree. To be full as a late-summer garden.

That we, the breathing, are careful with our own ghosts and each other’s.

That we, knowing the impossible wants, add a line on the list; to keep wanting.

AM, 2020″  / end id ]

[almostmolly]

MY FATHER’S DEAD AND I FEEL OLD

- Succession, “Connor’s Wedding”

Con me into solemnity: send iambs,

call in those steady old soldiering feet

for the 21-gun salute.

Give it to me, the news. Give me

good evening and welcome, give me we’ll be right back

(and there you are).

Gimme thanks for joining us on holidays, maybe.

I’d take it. Take that holly-hollow-holy day pandering

in our small rectangles of light. Children, we watched the day

slide slowly across the floor

tell its whole story on the hardwood

(on the rugs, the mats, the tile).

Tell us dawn is breaking, get up, ask us what do you want,

recount in its unstoppable way its dreams of dust motes and houseplants,

of the dog it rested on an hour.

We watched the day and the door

and backs (our own, hard, a hand, wing)

didn’t touch, don’t. That denial

its own kind of devotion, riverbed-dry and relentless.

And look, I’ve fucked it up: the metre’s gone, the signal’s out,

there’s no more oratory on offer.

No matter (call that my middle name). We’re live again soon anyway.

Good night, and good luck. Inside me a boy rattles, withered,

empty as a gourd. I think your hell will be the desert

they crash the satellites into.

[mia-ugly]

Spring scares me more than any other season

despite the flowers or perhaps

because of them.

Budding is a word with something unpleasant at its centre and

spring buds in abundance

pink and wet and hungry as a tongue.

I can respect autumn

that beloved bonfire of seasons

where leaves curl up like hands

and the world hangs by its ankles

bleeding itself dry

but spring is slick

liquid

all puddles and snowmelt

the souvenirs of winter’s throat bared to the light

having not survived but lingered.

I respect my elders

but spring is young

stumbling

leggy and lark-throated

starving melodies from baby birds

who do not know that crows and cats have bellies

just as empty.

There is something reassuring about ground too cold

to wedge a shovel in

too frozen to dig

the sort of soil that keeps secrets

but in spring the earth gives easily

too easily

you could do anything to it

jam your arm in up to the shoulder,

root around face first

until it floods your mouth and nostrils.

It has no self-respect at all

it wants to be touched

it wants to be toucheditwantstobetouched

it wants you to find the heart buried in it

forgotten like a ring

or a murder weapon

rake it up with last year’s leaves

until the whole pile is dry enough to burn.

Oh God.

I have wasted so much time.

[almostmolly]

Written last summer for printing in Slumber Party

TAPETUM LUCIDUM

There is a dog on my chest. A whole dog, (is how I would like to tell it to you) I'm eight years old and there's sixty, seventy pounds of dog, a Shepherd, spitz perched pointedly on my pliable centre.

She was good, probably, named outlandishly, famous for her loyalty and sharp-eyed vision. Kept the chickens safe, the house guarded.

And there she was, good and growling, scrabbling her blunt claws on spare blankets, heaving, snuffling, akimbo with joy.

My summer friend, in bed above, kept sleeping and I swallowed fear on the floor.

There was an entire dog on my chest is how I would tell it,      speak, joke at your heels      whine, find me under covers hound music from your mouth,

chase off the howling:      city wind      wild creatures      what gathers around the bones in the yard.

This rough beast crouched on my little kid torso, and it was fine, it was funny, it was fine as the skin over your ribs, fine as your fingers in their working, fine as the tarnished-silver sounds we can clatter off this mattress.

(Sweetheart let me wake you up keen and clumsy, huff this yip of off-leash, long-gone shame into your throat,

let me drop at your feet the laughter in my jaws.)

[almostmolly]

(Posted on twitter (@_pinehutch), also. Written in Keep, on my phone, in a single draft, in my car, parked. It's been a while, hey?)

FIVE DRINKS TO GET TO KNOW ME

1. Creek water: snow melt, notes of moss and granite. Serve in a cast-off piece of ceramic electrical insulator (forage for these along the hydro lines). Be lucky, be wild, be young.

2. Maple sap. Take it from the tree, take it from the pail that's nailed to the wood that is hale enough to share. Spring transfusions. Serve quickly, lest you leave lip prints behind.

3. Tea (black, hot, strong), milk. Sugar, if you haven't kissed a girl yet; without, once you have. Serve cupped in the mug that is cupped in your hands that are holding, held, or looking to hold. A drink for all seasons that could use a break. A drink for all seasons.

4. A 26 of Wiser's Deluxe and a case of store brand diet coke, cigarette-smoke garnish. Serve weekends (start before the kids go to bed, these are large volumes!) with the tv up too loud.

5. Something that tastes like fruit, and something that tastes like flowers, and something that takes like those bright rare mornings when someone else makes the coffee. Serve often. More often. A little more.

[pinehutch]

I'm not above snarling, not without howls. I can pull up the greatest hits and sing karaoke in this bloody chamber with the best of us. I can hang the microphone cord along the breastbone, too, can shear and crack and pull until I'm amphitheatrical. Hollowed-out space to resonate longing, silt-filling over time.

(Can ask you to dig your hands into the red split of me. Butterfly, flay, pin me; lay me flat and salt me, get me ready for your mouth.)

A claw, a lure, and a hook are the same shape in the dark. If we're talking ragged crescents then listen, darling, and I'll tell you where my own raw edges have left their marks.

(At night she sinks her fingers into herself and they come away sticky and wet. Clutches, grasps, scoops greedy handfuls of metaphor and there she is, there, bearing the meat of herself. As white and red as milk and blood, as the fairy tales say. As white and red as marbled flesh, as the tile and the lipstick crushed on it, as the unmarked belly. As a blush.)

At night she draws the same paths over her skin, over and over, short nails and bent fingers. Red paths and white ones, beacons in the branching black. She is trying to lead something to her. She is trying to set something free.

What else to be consumed by, if not this want?

[almostmolly]

I'm taking some time off work right now, and the urge to write things has come back faster than any other part of me. Still sad, still struggling with basic stuff, still worn out, but here's words sneaking back in again.

This was a 3:30 am little gothic prose poem experiment. There are parts of it I quite like and might repurpose, some time, but mostly it's just important to play around with self-indulgence.

[peepingnee]

Oct 10

You may be visited by three unseasonal ghosts. 

The first ghost is guilt. Shifting, shifty. It arrives without ritual, can hardly be said to have arrived: it’s there, though, shimmering but unmistakable. (Shimmering — It’s a mirage, or a flickering lightbulb, or heat lines over the asphalt. Subtle, but oh it draws the eye.) It asks, what have you forgotten, because you cared too much about poetry? It prompts, make the phone call that will never be answered again. It never lies. It is always on time. Not like you, not like you, not like you.  

The second ghost is the ghost of tedious dreaming. To summon the ghost of tedious dreams you need only to have one, and to talk about it. When you open your mouth the ghost will walk out over your teeth and cast an invisibility spell on the room. We were in a casino, but it was like a megastore, and a mall, and there were these hallways, and I forgot my wallet somewhere. I think it was a work trip? It feeds on the memory of playing make-believe, and other people’s word counts. 

The last ghost is the one you refuse to name. To call it you should imagine a hand on the back of your neck, a thumb passing between the base of your occipital bone and the back of your jaw. (Try to do this in a well-ventilated area, as this ghost is large and occasionally stifling.) When it appears it will ask you for its name. I know, it will taunt you. I know, I know, I know. This is known as howling, and is as ordinary and as meaningless as birdsong. 

(An alternative to this last spell is to trail your fingertips along your inner forearm and to think, resolutely, of no one.)

A new recording courtesy of @pinehutch (@almostmolly )

[almostmolly]

Slumber Party is available for pre-order!

In support of the National Network of Abortion Funds

Slumber Party, an 18+ zine featuring 30+ creatives from around the world is open for pre-orders!

Slumber Party is dedicated to a feeling: the one you get in the middle of the night when you know you should be quiet but you can't keep laughter from spilling over your tongue; when you're compelled to tell someone your most closely guarded secret because you trust them, and because it doesn't feel like it'll be real in the morning; when the space between your fingers and theirs is warm and thick; the moment before it all happens; falling in love in all the ways you know how, and some you don't.

The Slumber Party Collective stands in solidarity with Americans seeking abortions. All profits from zine sales will go to the National Network of Abortion Funds.

GET IT HERE

A note

This zine has been a labour of love from many people, most especially @stillseekwill. Her vision and organization have been inspiring and enabling, and the enthusiasm with which artists and writers embraced our theme is truly touching. We hope you'll consider meeting us at our Slumber Party by picking up a digital or print copy of this beautiful anthology. In turn, you'll be supporting the critical work of US abortion funds.

BUY SLUMBER PARTY NOW

[almostmolly]

soft hands and so few powers except

this ordinary thought:

I want to kiss honey from your mouth

(let a little of the burning be too-sweetness)

[stillseekwill]

What is Slumber Party?

Slumber Party is an 18+ zine dedicated to a feeling: the one you get in the middle of the night when you know you should be quiet but you can’t keep laughter from spilling over your tongue; when you’re compelled to tell someone your most closely guarded secret because you trust them, and because it doesn’t feel like it’ll be real in the morning; when the space between your fingers and theirs is warm and thick; the moment before it all happens; falling in love in all the ways you know how, and some you don’t.

In fewer words, the feeling you used to get at a slumber party.

Slumber Party is:

A home for personal essays, poetry, flash fiction, art, & photography

A collective and collaborative effort between friends made in strange and beautiful times

Queer & sex positive

Slumber Party is NOT:

for kids/teens (mature themes anticipated)

for TERFs, and other bigots

for profit (any profits will go to TBD charities)

Slumber Party is in the very early planning stages. At this time, I’m hoping to identify other creators who might be interested in collaborating in the organization of the zine, or contributing to it once we get to that phase. Additionally, if you are interested in potentially purchasing the final product, and would like to be kept up to date on zine progress, I’d love to know that too!

Complete the Expression of Interest Survey here.

Questions? Comments? Vibe Checks?

I’m VP, your humble organizer. Feel free to connect with me by DMing me here, or connecting with me on Twitter at @slumberzine.

[almostmolly]

PAV

I am looking at pictures of Pavlova

(dessert, not dancer)

and thinking about putting my hands into it

about pressing that pale topography into my palms

about its give and settle, about sweets like sighs,

heaped platters of sugar and gasping

about tongues drenched in berries' bursting

(what a finish: the dissolution of the exterior

the shattering shell

your melting, marshmallow heart)