Little Red Riding Hood Walked on While the Wolf Ran Ahead

A few weeks back I found some language arts cards at Four-Sided, a framing and ephemera shop on my street. I don't know if they are actual pages from a book, or cards that came in a lesson planning kit, but I wish I could have all of the ones around the story of Little Red Riding Hood.  (I bought three, and thankfully they are double-sided.)

Here is Exercise 2, in it's entirety:

Exercise 2.

Draw, cut out, or build with sticks:

1. A pair of shoes.

2. A shoe under a bed.

3. A doll with closed eyes.

4. A man's foot.

5. A horse's foot.

And here's another section of one card.  Eyes on your own work.

A Poetry Prompt from the Good People

The Good People of Right Hand Pointing, that is.


Here's the deal: (and I quote) 

"Issue 48 will be a special issue, due in March 2012.  We’ll start reading for it now.  In addition to our usual flavor of short fiction, all the poems accepted for that issue will be short narrative poems.  Our usual length guidelines apply.  (75 words or less but up to 100 words if it’s 16 lines or fewer.  16 lines or fewer, but up to 20 lines if the poem is 75 words or less.)  By narrative poems, we mean poems with at least one character and a plot.  It's a challenge, getting a story told in a short poem, but it can be done!" 

And then they deliver up an Alice Walker poem as proof.  It's recommended that you submit your poem in the next two weeks to have a chance of being in this issue.  So ready, set, write.  (Or scramble through your archives and see what might fit.)  

In the General Excitement, Gratitude, and Pride Department

Things have been very busy here at Lives of The Spiders.  Three of the prose poems from my Artistic Statement series just went live at kill author. Three spider poems, two of recent vintage and one (An Unknown Species) that was written in the late 1990s were just published by THIS magazine. And the fine folks at THIS saw fit to nominate that poem for a Pushcart Prize.  I have always been both proud and baffled by that poem--it came out of nowhere and was not similar to anything I'd written before. I think it was one of the first things I wrote where I used something, a quote in this case, as a diving board, to jump into the not known, as close to the unconscious as I can get, and just write what wanted to be written.

I'd like to thank the Academy.  And the editors.  And also Bill Yarrow, who met me at a reading and suggested I send some poems to THIS. Excuse me, I'm off to make some metaphors or hammer some bricks or drink some champagne or something.

Keep an eye on this space. In late December or early January I'll be announcing an exciting new phase of Lives of the Spiders.  More webs!  Different weavings!  And an invitation to join in some writing mischief.