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Literature Text
I caught a mermaid in a net under the docks when no one else was looking.
She was small, fragile, and her ribs gaped in gills that fluttered uselessly in the open air.
A small necklace made of shells and a skirt of woven seaweed told me she wasn’t a dumb fish. Long, curved, nails told me of her last dinner still snagged between her soft flesh and the protruding claw. A checkerboard scar on the arch of her fins told me my net wasn’t the first she’d swum into.
Her mouth, open and round like a goldfish, told me nothing.
Huge black eyes, blind in the sunlight, flirted meaninglessly around the underside of the pier.
I told her I loved her. I told her she was beautiful. I told her I would take care of her and never let anyone hurt her ever again.
Scaly body smacked desperately against pebble laced sand.
And I told her I was sorry.
She was small, fragile, and her ribs gaped in gills that fluttered uselessly in the open air.
A small necklace made of shells and a skirt of woven seaweed told me she wasn’t a dumb fish. Long, curved, nails told me of her last dinner still snagged between her soft flesh and the protruding claw. A checkerboard scar on the arch of her fins told me my net wasn’t the first she’d swum into.
Her mouth, open and round like a goldfish, told me nothing.
Huge black eyes, blind in the sunlight, flirted meaninglessly around the underside of the pier.
I told her I loved her. I told her she was beautiful. I told her I would take care of her and never let anyone hurt her ever again.
Scaly body smacked desperately against pebble laced sand.
And I told her I was sorry.
Literature
On The Threshold of Creation
Daughter of Hecate,
I was born upon the threshold
of one year and the next:
a tiny earthen creature,
awash in a sea of stars.
Too late did I remember
Capricorn is the goat with
the tail of a fish,
and perhaps my legs were never meant
to tread upon the earth.
I've heard tell
that Saturn is the harshest master,
and will never be satisfied
by words alone.
In the beginning I was sure-footed
as the goat who glitters in stars above me,
ideas sprung full-grown from my head,
as Athena born from Zeus
Too late do I recall
that prophecy foretold,
Zeus' own creation
would surpass even him.
I'm still trying to puzzle out
whether my own creation
will
Literature
Always
Your ghost is at my fingertips.
Literature
The Siren
Given half the chance, she'd rather sleep
Alone, half-frozen on the ocean floor
And picked apart by eels like so much seaweed,
Than undertake the chore of your affections.
Understand that you are not the first:
So many so-called "well-intentioned" men
Have thrown themselves upon her reef declaring
"Rescue!" she needn't even cast a net
To catch her keep. Yet still you come ashore
With vows to make your world your gift to her
As though her own were somehow wanting.
You claim the siren's singing lured you here?
You listened to that hoarse, rampageous scream,
"Away! Get back!" and called it music? No,
Though you and she may share a mother tongu
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A short piece of prose just to shout out to the world 'I'm not dead' despite the amazing amount of time I can spend without moving.
I'm experimenting with using different hemispheres of my brain.
I hope you all enjoy, expect a few more short little pieces like this, and please - if you have the time - tell me what you think.
-
Critique for tWR: thewrittenrevolution.deviantar...
Questions:
1. How did you find the 'voice' of the character? Was it too childish or laboured?
2. Did the whole piece flow from start to finish? I am concerned about the lines of description near the end. Do they interrupt?
3. Was it too repetitive?
4. Any spelling and/or grammar mistakes?
I'm experimenting with using different hemispheres of my brain.
I hope you all enjoy, expect a few more short little pieces like this, and please - if you have the time - tell me what you think.
-
Critique for tWR: thewrittenrevolution.deviantar...
Questions:
1. How did you find the 'voice' of the character? Was it too childish or laboured?
2. Did the whole piece flow from start to finish? I am concerned about the lines of description near the end. Do they interrupt?
3. Was it too repetitive?
4. Any spelling and/or grammar mistakes?
© 2013 - 2024 EvilpixieA
Comments17
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1. The voice didn't seem childish. I can't really get the character of the person speaking just from this, other than he or she is perhaps an unreliable narrator? Or something? Someone who lacks self-control.
2. I love the descriptions. A lot. I'd normally imagine mermaids as beautiful, childlike, and dreamlike, like the perpetually singing, clueless Ariel in The Little Mermaid, but this mermaid has another story - she seems feral and exotic and abused by mankind. That's the impression I got, but I confess I don't think I understood the story entirely, so I wasn't quite sure what to make of the ending. Did the narrator kill her? Sexually abuse her? I'm kind of lost. Sorry.
3. Nope, not repetitive. It's concise, and I like it that way.
4. I don't have any real critique on grammar. But as a small note, the second sentence violates the rule of parallelism. I guess you can consider rephrasing it, as in: "She was small and fragile, and her ribs gaped in gills that fluttered uselessly in the open air." And though I loved the gritty description of the mermaid, I somehow felt like this was phrased in an awkward way: "Long, curved, nails told me of her last dinner still snagged between her soft flesh and the protruding claw."