MY forefathers gave me
My spirit’s shaken flame,
The shape of hands, the beat of heart,
The letters of my name.
But it was my lovers,
And not my sleeping sires,
Who gave the flame its changeful
And iridescent fires;
As the driftwood burning
Learned its jewelled blaze
From the sea’s blue splendor
Of colored nights and days.

click here to view

Say Chaps, steady on! by Lissywitch
"he will not come back" by TheBrit
Poppy In The Pod by Chet King
Brilliant Beauty by Tori Snow
Sunburst by Barbara Brown
Where Spinnakers Come To Life by linaji
Shadowed Scenes... by Janis ZrobackLeechy by lumiwa
A strawflower by alan shapiroTropical Dreaming by Rachel Ireland-Meyers

lamiel MONTREAL, CANADA

Please check out this wonderful work at the friendship gallery

THE new layout for the breakfast club features is ready and banners reposted on all work previously submitted pheeeeeew!

check it out by clicking the breakfast club link in the above in the menu under groups :-)

Dear friends. I have been for a long time frustrated by the limitation within the RB infrastructure when it comes to featuring works. I find the layout limiting and not aesthetically pleasing. A few of you may have noticed the creation of THE PALETTE as a way to improve communications between the various groups I host and to help foster more of an inter group spirit. This vision is slowly taking shape and I think for the most part it has received a positive response. Now I am looking at moving our features to a designated page within THE PALETTE and hope to transfer all of our features past and present to these pages as time allows. I hope you will all agree that this format works better than the present as very few people go over past features the way they are presented now, whereas the new format will make more images available to be viewed by the public and hopefully translating to more views to your individual works. Each work featured in THE PALETTE will be individually linked back to your page. Once I have transferred the features I will be reposting a new banner on each work which is linked to the page. It would be helpful also if you can all share it on your various social networks.The more that people share the more chance our feature page will come up in google search engines and the more views.

Please bear with me as I am constructing the site and please report any broken links

thank you all for your support in this group :-)

Sylwia

click on the links below or on the friendship gallery button in the right pane.
Sunny delight by LudaNayveltHeartBreak by TheCandle
mellow yellow flames by lensbaby
Silence by TheBrit
CHRISTNA 3 by bharath
Black Kiwi by mindprintz
"Woman's head" by Tatjana Larina
encompassing light ....... by TheBrit

Mindprintz from Kolkata is now on display at the Suresh Saraswat Friendship Gallery.

I was thinking of a son.
The womb is not a clock
nor a bell tolling,
but in the eleventh month of its life
I feel the November
of the body as well as of the calendar.
In two days it will be my birthday
and as always the earth is done with its harvest.   
This time I hunt for death,
the night I lean toward,
the night I want.   
Well then--
speak of it!
It was in the womb all along.

I was thinking of a son ...   
You! The never acquired,
the never seeded or unfastened,   
you of the genitals I feared,
the stalk and the puppy’s breath.
Will I give you my eyes or his?
Will you be the David or the Susan?
(Those two names I picked and listened for.)
Can you be the man your fathers are--
the leg muscles from Michelangelo,
hands from Yugoslavia
somewhere the peasant, Slavic and determined,   
somewhere the survivor bulging with life--
and could it still be possible,   
all this with Susan’s eyes?

All this without you—   
two days gone in blood.
I myself will die without baptism,
a third daughter they didn’t bother.   
My death will come on my name day.   
What’s wrong with the name day?   
It’s only an angel of the sun.
Woman,
weaving a web over your own,
a thin and tangled poison.
Scorpio,
bad spider--
die!

My death from the wrists,
two name tags,
blood worn like a corsage
to bloom
one on the left and one on the right--
It’s a warm room,
the place of the blood.
Leave the door open on its hinges!

Two days for your death   
and two days until mine.

Love! That red disease--
year after year, David, you would make me wild!
David! Susan! David! David!
full and disheveled, hissing into the night,
never growing old,
waiting always for you on the porch ...   
year after year,
my carrot, my cabbage,
I would have possessed you before all women,
calling your name,
calling you mine.

Anne Sexton, “Menstruation at Forty” from The Complete Poems of Anne Sexton (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1981). Copyright © 1981 by Linda Gray Sexton and Loring Conant, Jr. Reprinted with the permission of Sterling Lord Literistic, Inc.