15 minute prompt:    ”My granny was sitting on the fish box.” (phrase from Daughters of Copper Woman, by Anne Cameron)

My granny was sitting on the fish box. The fish were flopping around, slapping the wooden sides of the box, making wet, splashy thuds that I decided were frantic and desperate.  I’d be frantic if I were so out of my element, trying to breathe but drowning. I began to feel sympathy for them.  ”Quit that,” Granny said, and kicked the box with her heavy boot. I thought she was talking to the fish. But she shook her fluff of white hair and squinted at me, pointing a bony finger. “I see you,” she said. “If you want to live closer to the ground, like you said, young lady, if you recall, then you gotta pay no attention to the last moves of anything you’re gonna eat. Mercy, if you’re feeling sorry for a bunch of cod, how’re you going to be when it comes to pig squeals and chickens with their heads cut off?”  I felt faint, here on the wet edge of the wharf. “Can’t I be vegetarian and live close to the earth?”  Granny squinted again, her bat-black eyes almost hidden in the wrinkles that surrounded them. She snorted. “Sure, if it makes you feel better. You’re a wimp, honey. And species-centric to boot. You think carrots don’t hurt when they’re yanked from the ground? Or wheat when it’s cut off in the prime of life, waving in the fields?”  Species-centric? When had my granny, raised by her fisherman father on this craggy coast, pulling crab pots and chopping oysters from the rocks by the age of 5, attending school only until the 8th grade — when had she picked this up, or even had such thoughts? This was a granny new to me. What else didn’t I know? I didn’t care about the fish anymore.  They’d stopped flopping anyway.

15 minute prompt

My granny was sitting on the fish box. Her hair was wild, a white flair like a snowstorm waving around her head. Her eyes were wild, too. They darted here and there like an animal’s. Those eyes had bite. Most people looked away or at the ground when they passed her. The fish box was only full of fish. My dad and I had packed it in the summer with layers of salmon and salt, but Granny was sure her soul was in there. I tried to reason with her, but there was not talking to someone so crazy.

“Granny,” I said, “there’s just the salted fish in there. I helped pack it myself. Come on now. Let’s open it up and have a look. You’ll see.”

Granny gave me a withering look, filled with pity, like you give a slow child who doesn’t understand a thing about the world when they’re old enough to know better.

“Ok,” I said, “How did your soul get out of your body and into the box?”

“I already told you!” she said. “When I was in the canoe on the way to the summer camp, that big granny orca came singing to me. When I opened my mouth to sing back the greeting, she swallowed my soul. She was hungry because we took too many salmon. We’ve grown careless. We don’t say thank you properly. We just take and take. The granny orca is old-old. I’ve seen her in those waters since I was a girl and always I greet her and thank her properly, and ask her permission to take the fish.”

“Ok,” I said, “so the orca has your soul then?”

“No!” She spat. “Pay attention! You don’t know anything! My soul is in the box. The whale gave my soul to the fish. She opened her mouth and my soul was swallowed by the fish.”

“If you eat the fish,” I said, “won’t you get your soul back?”

“No!” she snapped. “Foolish girl! It doesn’t work like that. These fish must go back to the sea, to the granny orca. Only she can give me back my soul.”

I was really trying to hear her, but I did not truly understand the old ways and beliefs. “Granny,” I said gently, “We need those fish to eat, or we’ll go hungry this winter.”

“No,” she said. “Granny Orca will provide more. We must return these fish and sing for them and for us. We must sing to the orca and beg forgiveness, and sing my soul back home, or I will be crazy forever.”

15 minute prompt

Where did I get Gladys? People ask me this all the time. It’s not surprising they want to know. A psychic chicken is not very common. You may be scoffing in disbelief. It’s OK, scoff away. I’m used to it. I didn’t believe myself at first.

The fact is, I didn’t “get” Gladys at all. She wandered into my yard one summer afternoon from the woods behind my house. I assumed she was an escapee from one of the neighbors’ chicken coops. A lot of people keep chickens around here. But nobody came looking for her, so I let her stay. She seemed happy picking bugs out of my lawn and hunkering down to sleep beneath the pink azalea. She’s pretty, as far as chickens go—mottled black, orange, and yellow-gold. She’s fussy about preening herself, and I like watching her step delicately around the yard, the way she slowly lifts one foot at a time in a step-bob, step-bob gait.

It was after Gladys had been with me for about a month and I’d grown quite attached to her that she first began to exhibit her psychic ability. It started with small things. I went out to give her leftovers from lunch. She primly stepped up to me and stared directly into my eyes. As she held my gaze unblinkingly I heard a voice in my head say, “The kids will be late today, but don’t worry. They will be fine. The school bus is going to have mechanical trouble and they will have to wait for a replacement. Oh, and by the way, my name is Gladys.” I was sure I was imagining all this. I am a writer and have been accused of having an overactive imagination by my pragmatic husband. Gladys began to eat, tucking into her cold tortilla and bean scraps with relish.

At 3:30, my two children had not arrived home from school. I walked out to the bus stop to wait. They should’ve been here by 3:00. At 4:05 a yellow bus finally appeared. Michael and Sarah rushed down the steps and said, “Mom! You won’t believe it! The bus made this horrible noise and then it broke down! We had to wait for a new one! We sang songs while we waited.” I was in shock.

The instances have escalated from there. Gladys the Magic Chicken predicted Hurricane Katrina and the death of Osama bin Laden, although she’s been curiously silent on the subject of lottery numbers.

15 minute prompt

Artemis emptied her quiver. She shot at a white stag running through the silver light of night, following on fleet feet as the stag kept running, flanks heaving and sweating until it finally collapsed at the edge of the lake, eyes glassy and still. A pool of blood spread beneath its body. Artemis stepped into the moonlight to greet the young hunter whose steps she’d been shadowing. His arrows were spent, too. The young man recognized the goddess and knelt before her, thanking her for a successful hunt, on this sacred night.

“You are the stag now,” the lithe deity said. “Eat of this creature’s heart and remember that you carry its power always, as well as its beauty and honor. Do not forget humility when you rise to power because of this feat.” The hunter, still panting from the exertion of the long chase, nodded solemnly. He knelt before the beast and cut out the slippery organ with a hand-knife. He tasted the raw flesh, warm and salty, smooth on his tongue and throat.

After swallowing the meat, he felt faint and tumbled backwards into a dream. He was running through the forest on a moonlit night. He was wearing heavy antlers and running on four legs, fleet-footed and strong. Looking over his shoulder he saw a young man chasing him, and the shadow of a tall woman just behind. He felt the bite of the first arrow pierce his chest, then another and another. He continued running, but finally fell to his knees at the water’s edge, where the life force drained from his body, into that of the other. When he woke, he was sitting alone at the lakeshore with the white stag beside him and blood on his hands and face.

15 minute prompt

A man in smoke tied silk cords around my wrists—lavender. They tickled and were not very tight. They disappeared almost as soon as they were tied, almost as soon as the man himself, like the wisps of smoke floating away on the night wind. The vision occurred in my garden. I had gone out in my nightdress and sandals, a warm summer evening, to trim the dahlias by moonlight, my summer full-moon ritual. The smoky mist appeared when I was standing near the old grave stone I’d found the previous summer. The mist came in from the coast, which was strange, because the day had been fair and the night clear. I had six of the orange, pink, and yellow flowers laying over one arm—a mass of shimmering petals glazed with dew, when the figure emerged and I felt my wrists mysteriously bound. The stranger’s face was indistinct, both foreign and familiar. He seemed sad.

“Don’t forget,” he whispered when he melted away on a sudden chill wind. The mist went with him, but when I recovered my senses, I looked to the ground behind me and there lay the flowers and two lavender silk cords. I stooped to inspect the ribbons, drew one through my fingers. It was faded and worn, frayed at the ends. What must I remember?

I brought the dahlias and the cords into the house. I set the flowers in a fluted vase with water and placed them on the kitchen table. The cords I took into the parlor. I pulled out the wooden box in which I’d collected the other strange items that had come to me in the year since discovering the grave in my garden: a tarnished brass key, a photograph of a woman in a worn dress and sun bonnet, a photo copy from the county historical society about the history of the estate my cottage and garden were once a part of, and the pieces of broken china—a fine bone china with delicate pink and gray blossoms—that I’d found buried near the grave when I was planting geraniums. I took a closer look at the photograph. It was black and white, so I couldn’t know the color of the dress, but I noticed that the edges of the wide sleeves had shiny cord threaded through them, tied in bows at the bottom. Could these be the same cords?

15 minute prompt

A surprise warning beeped at me from the console. What could be the matter? Spiders in the engine room again, I suppose. They’d somehow gotten in during our last visit to space dock on Epsilon Beta 4, and they’d really made a mess of cobwebs all over the place. Stupid spiders. They’re some kind of super-strain able to withstand radioactive heat. God knows what they eat down there. But their nests exploded overnight, clogging up pipes and blocking energy signals, which slowed our speed down considerably, which is a real problem, because we have to make it all the way to the Zeta Strand for an interplanetary caucus on space garbage dumping, which has become a serious flight hazard. The Zeta Strand is over three billion light years away, and at this rate, we’ll never make it in time.

My chief disposal officer, Lieutentant Simmons, is to deliver the keynote address, being, as he is, the universal expert in compact waste reusal, recycling and disposal. He’s squireled away in his office right now penning his remarks about the dangers and largely untapped benefits of floating garbage debris jettisoned by over-developed planets, such as Earth. You really have to be on your guard when you’re cruising along and right in your path you hit a patch of metal shards and old car bodies and ship hulls. Running into debris like that can scrape up the hull of my sleek, Class D Skin Diver space cruiser, even causing a puncture wound.

Of course, Simmons sees these floating landfills as reclamation opportunities and insists on stopping to pull the junk into the debris bay, so his crew can melt it down into bricks of metal and composites, which he sorts into various grades, then sells to brokers at the ports we visit, although this isn’t our primary mission. We’re actually a diplomatic vessel, carrying some very important ambassadors and dignitaries, but as we make our rounds, Simmons’ sales are a lucrative side business, and sometimes a useful bargaining tool. Well, I’d better go down and see about those spiders.

15 minute prompt

The balloon floated through the trees miraculously not catching on any branches or popping. Up it drifted, until it was a pink speck against a white sky. Marigold had never had a balloon before. She found it tied to a chair outside the state fair grounds. No one was around. The fair was over and the balloon was abandoned, so she untied it and carried it home, back to her family’s ramshackle trailer in the woods outside of town. Her mother was suspicious of the shiny pink toy and accused her of stealing from the town folk. “Mari, you just take that thing right back where you found it. Nobody would lose such a fine thing as that. They’re bound to be lookin’ for it. Don’t you go makin’ trouble for us, you hear?” The girl nodded and looked at the ground.

Marigold left with the balloon in hand, bobbing from its slender string. How did it stay up in the air like that? She’d never seen anything like it, ‘cept for the humming birds, but they were more like big fat bumblebees than this pink rubber ball. She pulled it down and pressed it against her chest, wrapping her skinny dirt-streaked arms around the squishy object. Full of air it was. So light. It made a scritchy-squeaky sound when she rubbed her fingers against it. She knew she couldn’t return it to the chair at the fairgrounds. What if someone saw her? She knew she shouldn’t have been there in the first place, but she was curious.

She’d heard the music, laughter, and loud voices calling out prizes for pigs and cows and pies, and she watched the top of the ferris wheel spin round and round, impossibly high, from where she hid, bare-foot in the trees at the edge of a big field full of cars. A fat man with a red face sat in a chair outside the entrance gate collecting money and handing out tickets to the visitors, the chair where the pink balloon was tied. That’s why Marigold knew the balloon was abandoned. The man, and the ferris wheel and the smell of popcorn were gone. So Marigold hugged the soft thing to her chest once more, then let go of the string. She sighed as it drifted up, up, and up, receding like a dream.

15 minute prompt

They came like swallows through the night, black sparrows or bats, or even butterflies. I couldn’t see them, just felt the flutter of their thousand wings brushing my face and hair with their warm wind. What were they emissaries of on that April night? No other sounds in the air. Just the smell of daphne knocking me over with her pink perfume, almost indecent, the way it made me lose my senses.

There was an air of death about those fluttery things, wave after wave of dark bodies. Where were they going? Where had they come from? My naturalist’s mind could make no sense of the migration. We do not have locusts in these parts, large bat colonies, hoards of butterflies, or birds that fly at night. Maybe the phenomenon was something I conjured from my own need to make material the residue that clung to my body after I lost the child that wasn’t meant to live.

I felt empty for days, light enough to fly away, but where would I go? I didn’t wish to leave here, not this physical place, but perhaps there’s a place my soul wanted to run to, to find a new life, something it could bring back to my body and say, “See? Look at this. This is what you have birthed. Something living did come out of all that blood.” But I am afraid of what it will be, because I saw the death come out of me, the clumps of blood and the white fleshy thing—I cannot even bear to call it an embryo—that fell into the toilet and stared accusingly out of the water.

No, it didn’t stare, didn’t have eyes. It was turned inward on itself, keeping its own secret. It was I who stared, both horrified and fascinated. Look what I produced. Look what came out of my body, flesh of my flesh, a separate thing, of me and not of me. I almost scooped it out for a closer examination, but repulsion won and I flushed. Maybe the wings overhead are my dark angels, protecting me, bearing the spirit child to a happy place, where she will wait for me once more.

5 minute prompt

Inside the drawers I keep my socks bunched up in a state of semi-organization. The pairs are mostly matched and shoved into general categories: wool winter socks, light cotton socks, sport socks, and fuzzy house socks, but they bleed into one another, much like the semi-organized categories of my life. I meditate—on my shopping list. Poems come to me when I’m showering or driving. While paying bills and filing, I’m thinking about making art. When I’m glueing, pasting, and painting, I feel that organization is just a myth. This is a recurring theme, and yet, I keep pushing piles of socks back into their corners, telling them to stay put. They never do.

20 minute prompt

Or perhaps they never left. I have need of them again now, the two wolves who guard my meditative space. They are the ones that used to come to me in dreams, as teachers. Now they wait patiently, until I come to them in that dark place inside my core, the place I sink into, when I need to touch that inner knowing and plumb its depths for guidance.

I went there today, because I was feeling lost in too many details, with too much noise around me–the neighbors shouting through paper-thin walls. Dogs barking. Construction hammers and drills smashing and grinding. Scooters buzzing. Italian lessons drumming in my head: “Buongiorno signora. Come sta? Bene, grazie. E Lei?” Train time tables to Venice, Florence, Sarzana. Lists of ingredients on grocery store packaging as I search for gluten-free pasta, crackers, cereal (“senza glutine”). The drone of the rabbi chanting the liturgy in yesterday’s Yom Kippur service in Viaregio. The words of welcome and “living in Italy” advice from the nice Jewish American couple who run a B&B in the hills. (They have invited us to dinner next week.) The cars that honk as I drive home from the grocery store because I’m going too slow, at 20 km/hr over the speed limit!

The wolves welcome me in the dark hall of my mind, licking my hands, as they always do, nuzzling and sniffing me back to my essential self. I bring them canelloni. I always bring them gifts–good things to eat–from wherever I am. In Norway I brought them smoked mackerel, which they gobbled greedily.

One wolf stands sentry to this sacred portal between worlds. The other leads me to another doorway and sends me to a wooded pool at the base of a waterfall, where I dive in and swim down, through a tunnel, then surface in a second pool, surrounded by tropical jungle, beneath a dark canopy of tangled leaves. A different guide, my underworld guide, awaits me there–half-human/half-frog–and leads me down a short path, into a cave. A stream runs over smooth rock. I sit down, put my bare feet in the cool ribbon of water. The frog-man tells me to let everything go–I pour the noise, the overwhelm, the grief and fear, which the sensuality of Italian life has squeezed out of me like a toothpaste tube, into the water. I breathe it out of me, wash it away, feel hard rock beneath my bottom and against the backs of my thighs.

I need these imagined internal places. I need to make them real, so I can root into myself when the wild cacophony of life begins to pull me apart like a galaxy expanding outwards, breaking into pieces, all my molecules zooming away from each other at light speed. I need these guides, whoever they really are, to remind me to stay put in my animal body, to be at home there, to lick and nuzzle my skin with their soft tongues, wet noses, and furry heads, to bite me with sharp teeth when I stop paying attention to what I am, to touch my knee caps with sticky finger pads and remind me of the cool water and solid rock of my being. Yes, the wolves are back, to send me back to myself, to send me home when I have wandered too far away.