It was a little over a month ago that we showed you twelve pictures a little like the ones below. We asked you to pick two and translate the space between them.
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So you did.
We received a veritable smorgasbord of submissions (seven, specifically). Please take the time to read them:
The Happenstance on Bricker Street It was the hottest day Jennifer Mae could remember. She sat on the front porch with a pitcher of sweet tea and fanned herself to keep the heat and the bugs away.
Across the street, a gaggle of neighborhood boys sprawled out under the shade of a tree, halfheartedly pushing a soccer ball between them. Jennifer Mae sipped her tea and wondered if they were waiting for the sun to go down so they could continue their game. She thought about offering them tea, but then thought better of it. They’d kicked a ball into her azaleas last week and her poor flowers hadn’t been the same since.
It seemed like a perfect time to drift into a nap. She considered it as she rocked and even put her tea down so it wouldn’t spill all over her feet, but then she was startled nearly out of her chair when a camper rolled across her field of vision and came to a stop in the alley behind her house.
A man in an outback hat climbed out a
The WaitAnd the old women wait for death
like he’s the lover of their youths;
people-watching from train station benches
crossed ankles swollen
checking pockets for change to pay the ferryman’s fare.
When silent, they curse each other’s bones.
Speaking, their talk is small as grains of rice—
in death, they want only to be allowed their plaid skirts,
their leopard-print bags.
The Dance of the Black DressIf he ignored almost everything, it was just as he remembered.
“Is this the right place, doctor?” one of his guards asked kindly. The voice of the young man was muffled by the gasmask he wore.
“This is it,” the old doctor said. (At forty, he was not old, but other survivors were so young.) “You should have seen it my day. All that over there . . . that used to be a park.”
And there used to be people here. Families walking past as he sat on his spot and watched the street performers. There were birds. There was life. The pavement used to be clean enough, but now it was covered with angry words, sprayed to stay here for a few more years at least.
“It’s like I remember,” he said, to make the thought more true. “There. There! That’s my spot. I came here all the time.”
His two guards allowed him to make is own way to the edge of the old city square. There were plenty of benches to sit, but those were not for him. He sat
The vanNik and Ludis drove the van across Germany and into Belgium. It was a dying security truck with a mattress in the back. There were seven of us plus the kid and the dog; nine in total. Four travelled in the car and the rest in the van. We took turns on the mattress. At nights we sat by the river and smoked and talked and when the stars got up and the smoke got in our blood we got out an old guitar, the veteran of a hundred climate camps we’d been given by a hippy in exchange for twelve apples, and sang. During the day whoever wasn’t driving slept. Only Jimmy and Max claimed to be able to handle the obstreperous van, and nobody disagreed because it meant longer hours driving. The hours between dawn and dusk belonged to the day people and the tarmac, but the night was ours.
We parked in fields far from any main roads, on traveller sites and by riverbanks. More than once the van wheels caught in soft Belgian mud and it took
Please also give some love to the photographers of the pictures of the prompts
The next prompt, a music-based thingy, will be up in a matter of mere days. Give or take.
Deviants
