2020
Salt and Pepper Prompt In Storymaker
Join us in kicking off the New Year
Fellow writers.
Our team at Storymaker are inviting you to our first prompt competition. The theme is “Salt and Pepper.” Send us your work and we will feature the best on the front page and in our newsletter. We encourage all mediums, including writing, artwork, photography, and mixed media, as long as it’s related to the theme. It is encouraged to have some text relating to the prompt. Micheal Stang and Anna Rozwadowska have put together two pieces, one poetry and one prose, to get you started. Don’t forget to Tag your piece with “Salt and Pepper.”
Have fun with it!
Anna Rozwadowska
“Observation”
I left my demeanor, whilst roaming in the ether, a body left with strong palliation, yet, blood pushes circulation, I tilted to the other side, salt and pepper rushed out from mine mouth, I guess bitter/sharp had occupied my mind, to undue that madness that these years have brought delight, fright, no, just an elation towards taste in the bland nature of speculation.
I longed for authenticity, a craving for the truth tastes bitter/ salt in the fresh wound of acceptance, you lie in formation while you observe coalescence in a manner of obligated observation, calling you for wisdom passed down through generations, lest shall we hinder motion from staleness, stones on pebble streets which remind you that you are unbalanced, the crackling of the pepper mill, you walk along pebble streets shifting from side to side, pondering the nature of existence.
Anna Rozwadowska 2020
Michael Stang
“The Big Dig”
The two of us stood at attention in revered silence, unseen, removed back behind the crowds. The landscape swept across our tectonic visions: breathless spirals of infectious nature turned us at once psychic, lifting impossible layers from our sights.
We weren’t soldiers, none of us were. One-hundred and fifty-thousand assembled on the mount. They told us the second coming will show, if we dug. Unearth the mainspring, they shouted, and feed the crowd, not the other way around … for once. The Pilgrims fell to their knees.
Religious souls listened for saints who spoke in unifying tongues, but that is ahead of us; two young girls conscripted. Shovels and spades removed the drops as we set about the work. Others would join later after initiation, if they stood worthy of the soil.
Much life and blood-trace to be removed. They called us diviners, but it is not that romantic. We dig. Our mothers dug; their mothers. Our hands shaped the recesses, shaded the hills with their own dust, then went deeper. There were patterns among us; back to backs, shovel and spade as the particles flew and the sand slowly lost balance and a canter slipped to reveal a crown. Or a tusk. Or written warnings on stones. Still, it was not enough. The second coming will come only once.
Though the cloth on our backs hold stripes, insignia’s, our caps a distant hint of fashion. The only thing changed is the future of the past has come now to our present. Always this was to be the case, to come down to this: the sweat, the salt, illumination. We Cottager[s].
Strata’s ferocity dug in perfect union with her body. A pace in step with my own imagination. We were closing in on the chasm.
“It is denser here,” I said, splitting the spade in two.
She threw her tool and scrawled at the rocks with her hands, breaking into a layer of dark root. “What can this be, so far down?”
Our shaved heads beamed off the sun and our eyebrows burned, but still another layer.
“Humanity’s pepper, a jealous possessor, binds away our goal. Sins, sister, have volume — somewhere.”
“They must account or we will lose the ground.” I screamed. Strata fell frozen, paralyzed. Her fearful eyes watching me as I watched the blue fade to grey.
Enjoy! From the Storymaker team:
