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Thirty Days Of Julia: Day Fourteen

Posted by WilkyBarKid on July 23, 2011 - 12:02
from the ABC set Thirty Days Of Julia

Our first glimpse of the sea was of a dark
expanse, as flat as an asphalt playground.
The sun left yellow chalkmarks, roughly scuffed
by the cold steel blakeys of winter wind.
She leaned on the concrete wall: a defence
built after the floodtide of fifty-three
and spoke of her brother, who drowned when she
was still floating, safe in her mother's womb.
The arcades were empty, the kiosks shut.
Dust gathered on last year's bingo prizes.
No children on the swings that creaked with rust.
The sea looked the same as in black-and-white
photos of a grinning boy in swimming
trunks who would never finish his ice cream.

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Comments

fatboy74 | July 24, 2011 - 21:36

Pretty amazed you are still going - well done and this for me has such a sense of place and the image of the girl floating in the womb in contrast to the brother drowning is pretty special. :-)

WilkyBarKid | July 25, 2011 - 07:55

Just won a weekly flash challenge on another site with this poem.

No-one's more amazed than me that I'm still going, though I'm starting to hear the sound of a barrel being scraped.

The most difficult thing is to stay in context within such a narrow frame of time, place and characters I've set myself.

fatboy74 | July 25, 2011 - 21:33

Congratulations! - I know you have said you are struggling with edits, but i think the important thing is to keep going and then worry after - important not to lose valuable creativity worrying over the odd word here and there - you are creating something very substantial despite the difficulty and it's more than admirable. Over half way...