STORY AND POEM OF THE MONTH

Our Story and Poem of the Month for December, very kindly chosen by rjnewlyn:

 

Picks of the month for December are always a little hard to sell, because Christmas has passed and I don’t suppose many of us are in the mood to re-visit it as we brace ourselves for January weather and the year ahead. But do please have one final backward look, because there really were some excellent contributions last month with resonances lingering well beyond the festive season. 

For poetry, first place goes to Di­_Hard for Spring a Butterfly who just pipped luigi_pagano’s A Dim and Distant Star to the post – both quietly effective and evocative in their own ways. Read them here: 

https://www.abctales.com/story/dihard/spring-butterfly

https://www.abctales.com/story/luigipagano/dim-and-distant-star

However, honourable mentions also to a couple of really rather good, if a little bizarre, odes to good food: a sexy pancake and a bagel, in this instance. I’m not sure whether a new ‘food poetry’ genre is going to be needed for ABCtales classification, but I guess they’re as much part of long winter darkness as anything else. Read them here: 

https://www.abctales.com/story/yutka/ode-sexy-pancake

https://www.abctales.com/story/alfie-shoyger/bagel

For prose, the stand-out for me was Words by rosaliekempthorne – a Christmas Day post that really quite masterfully covers a whole host of emotions redolent of the season, from bitter to sweet, and without ever feeling forced or self-conscious at any point. It’s one of the best-crafted prose-posts I’ve come across in a while, even down to the line spacing and the way it appears on the screen. Read it here: 

https://www.abctales.com/story/rosaliekempthorne/words

As well as this, if you’re feeling the dull bite of January, you might possibly find it helpful to look back at some elements of the pre-Christmas build-up and wallow for a while in the warm glow of relief that they’re all over for another year. If so the posts below (on office parties and dodgy presents) might do the trick: 

https://www.abctales.com/story/jane-hyphen/dirty-christmas-kiss

https://www.abctales.com/story/hudsonmoon/another-cock-eyed-christmas

Happy 2019!