A PICTURE PAINTS A THOUSAND WORDS
We presented a picture, asked what you saw and assembled the passages of poetry and prose that were submitted to create a shared vision.
Thank you to everyone that dived into their imagination and joined us for part three of our Exquisite Corpse series.
We put together the fragments we received instinctually, seeing certain patterns in the contributions, gathering recurring motifs we found in your musings, to present just one way the path could lead.
A returning visit, a grieving process, painful memories full of love, hidden rage, a bird resigned.
There are many ways to assemble and many processes and perspectives but in light of our own interpretation, we decided to name this next exquisite corpse tale, 'Tending the Grave'.
Whose heart does this belong to?
H.N. (intro)
A lone magpie sat on the dead oak, contemplating sorrow. Was it a tomb or a standing stone that bore the inscription of a heart? A path wound from the hill villages to the black glade. Ferns, eternal straddling the monolith. Whose heart does this belong to?
Aradia Sessoms:
And why did it matter? For the magpie knew that just like the monolith, he too was part of the very matters that carved the deep heart into the stone. All things in this world have a beginning and an end. Maybe he was the very soul buried in the deep soil. If only he could retrace his steps in how he got there...Maybe nature would be kinder to him in this lifetime.
A.M. Gomez:
Was it the site of a murder or the promise of love?
I wish mother had told me, but it was always “One for sorrow and two for joy…” Poetry and madness, that was what she could do. That bird and the stone were the first riddles I encountered on the road, but it was only when I met four, that I would come to know that they were (like all riddles) imperceptibly tied to truths of my own.
Lisa Wallenstein:
The magpie startled and took flight. An old woman approached, holding a bundle. Making sure no one was near, she unpacked from it a single rose, a tooth and a femur. The woman bent to dig a shallow hole by the old standing stone. She should've known that he was watching. Always, he saw what she was up to. He omitted a cry. She raised, and said, welcome, bird from a feather! And how are you today?
S.A.Rennie:
The rock in ages past had been watered by the blood of women from the villages, mourning children dead of the black flux. They believed that if they slit their palms over its smooth face the goddess would come and exact revenge on the men who had poisoned the corn.
Even today, the women came to pay homage. The magpie, the goddess's emissary, kept watch, as the women wept.
Ute Volbehr:
In the old days, the young folk from the hostile villages still visited the splendid big oak to leave secret messages to their loved ones from the other cottage; but after the duke's son had burned his betrothed when she was meeting her real love down at the glade, the lover’s stone had become more of a headstone than a love nest, a warning to not cross the boundaries never more.
Beate Meiswinkel:
The Magpie watched people coming from the villages. Sometimes, couples approached, holding hands while they stood by the stone. Occasionally, a vow of love was whispered to the wind. Others came alone, reaching out for the heart, uttering a silent cry. Tears fell to the ground like rain. Strange humans! The Magpie had enough of sorrow. When she flew off, a golden ring was shimmering in her beak.
Juna:
Hand in hand we walked. A self unfettered from time, now clinging to my pulsing wrist, a last connection. A self upside down, unshackled from space, of a mind long lost to me. And I, the kisser of dirty tombs and unquiet graves. I put my ear to the heart, thumping like my own inside. A faint scratch against the stone, the spot of pain. A final question: Why are you at my grave?
Silke Brandt:
Above the stone, a flurry of sooty grays and misty whites: A ghost magpie swooped down in a gust. The lone bird watched, as the other clawed the earth. Sensing a cache? Hidden so long ago, he couldn’t recall. He should investigate, but hadn’t eaten for days and strength had left him. His pale double beckoned with red, unblinking eyes. The heart-shape flickered, opened onto a warm and ashen world.
Nana D:
Grain of darkness, black as scoria. Whispers in grey granulate, swallowed screams from the earth’s liquid and flaming core. A presence that took me in, laid my body bare: a long-haired creature, siren of soil. Undetermined. Unkept. Wild and whole. Creature of ambivalence. Oh my heart, my heart. I plead to her, take me. Undetermined. Unkept. Wild and whole. Oh my heart, my heart.
Lisa Marie Basile:
That belonging is unknowable,
that we can never contort nor control nor dig our hands
into the pulp of time, into the maw of the soil,
without destroying something inviolate.
We must let the belonging be without contour.
Everything is love, even death.