[ 3 / biz / cgl / ck / diy / fa / ic / jp / lit / sci / vr / vt ] [ index / top / reports ] [ become a patron ] [ status ]
2023-11: Warosu is now out of extended maintenance.

/lit/ - Literature


View post   

File: 78 KB, 800x865, [you].jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
16012879 No.16012879 [Reply] [Original]

Your mother and father are here, too.
The girl Katrina, from kindergarten, who called you “tomatoface.” You liked her a lot.
Viviana California, a superhero’s name. You always drew her in your notebook paper with a
cape. You remember the notebook paper perfectly: big lines with a dashed line running through the
middle. Capital letters touch the top and bottom lines, lowercase goes no higher than the
dashed-line. Viviana California is here, too. A crush you would have forgotten about if not for us.
Daniel is here. The way you two played during recess made you feel like Christmas lights,
flashing on, off.
Emmanuel, the exchange student from Ethiopia who barely knew English, but you
understood what that felt like and became his friend. He punched you and you punched him. The
two of you drew Super Saiyan 4 Goku and kept the drawings folded in your desks.
Itza, the very first non-family member to touch your hand.
Guillermo is here too and it shames you to think of that. The big bully in middle school who
pulled your shorts down in the middle of P.E. But you saw his penis once while you two were
changing and you went home and you couldn’t stop thinking about it. It’s okay to keep thinking
about it.
Lola, back in highschool. Her face was perfect and you told a friend she was your soulmate.
She was what introduced you to the idea of the kids all around you taking drugs and having sex. She
was so much taller than you.
Your step-aunt Maria Pia is here. Don’t be ashamed about it.
The boy with the dark eyelids who lit your first cigarette. Alma, with the red hair and who
asked you to sign her yearbook. The guy with the nose-piercing. The chick with the thigh-high socks
and the denim jacket. The girl with the Audrey Hepburn sunglasses. Sara, your very first, and
Adrian, the boy who Sara ended up going out with, ended up having a baby with. The guy who put
you in a headlock, the guy who you put in a headlock. The athletes who played with themselves in
the locker room like they were swordfighting. Joyce, whose favorite pokemon was Lapras. Be with
her. Them. All of them. The friends of friends and the lovers of lovers. Strangers in buses, in waiting
rooms. All of them, lined up and smiling at you.
Everyone is here except you. So come on in.

>> No.16012959

bump

>> No.16013060

Oh, mis -pequeñiantres antiquisitimos del lavernisimo infinitisimo -de aquellas, aquellos, aquellantes-- migos, omigos, deimos, que conocereis nunca -en donde, pereniaisteis- sitio desconocido y apremiante, doliente y temiente, sufriente y pendiente, preocupasteis preocupados por la cuestion -radical -a mi parecer -denotriantementeisteisco y demostriantestemeisco- veo que- que veo- bastante compleja y acomplejadisima e issima de nuestra colabozacion colaborada. Cuestion una y otra que acuestiona y produce corazones en interior suyo -de ustedes- puesto que la presente y sospecho que dente vosotros y merced avuestrada, dudarian muchisimos -varios de astedes, vuestros- comprensiones varias y variarian, entendimiento llegar a su almas.
Esto lo escribi improvisado, asi que tocaria revisarlo y pulirlo.

>> No.16013128

If only 'twere not just my skin that felt
If only 'twere not just my eyes that saw
And that a thousand creeping bugs and fungi
Would collapse and excavate this rind stifling my bones
So that I might escape this fleshy sack
And jump out into the cool night's windy chatter
And feel its breath on my structure

>> No.16013532

>>16012879
What's the context? Is this a short story you're working on? An excerpt from your novel? It's good, but I'd like to read it again with that context.

>> No.16013561

>>16012879
This is giving me feels I didn’t even know I had, good shit.

She slept beneath a sea of stars. Soft eastern wind swept through the high hills and low places of the wilderness. Feeling it brush past her fingers and hair, she awoke at last and saw the blue night rising over her. It would be around this time for men of the wood to close and lock their doors, animals to emerge from the thick brush, and for giants to wade through trees like tall grass. With the moon hanging low, the world was as it always had been, quiet and still. But in secret, she knew this night would be different. There were stars beyond stars coming to shine upon the land as they once had, and now they had risen again. All she had to do was wait, and soon there would be wonder.

The land was cluttered with far reaching trees, dark against a dark night. Each passing breeze sent their branches rustling softly against each other, the sound like clear ocean water spreading itself against a distant sandy shore. Being late autumn, there were many leaves which flew away as the gusts went past. By then the air had become quite cool and sank down into the deep places of the wood. There, fell trees and stones lay hidden amidst wild stalks of grass, with the bobbing light of fireflies blinking in and out.

>> No.16013698

>>16013532
Introduction a novel,
cont :For the Missing Persons report, I chose my grandmother’s favorite photograph of herself. In
it, she’s wearing a yellow sundress and yellow heels, with a yellow headband in her black hair. She’s
leaning against a highway railing, with an ocean far behind her. She is coming to California with the
man she met before my grandfather, and the sun is so bright and the sky is so blue and everything is
so pretty that they want to document it. Or, at least, he wants to document her. She is, I think, about
twenty years old here. She holds her hand out a little above her forehead, to block out the sun. She is
squinting at something, and smiling with just her red lips. At least she always told me they were
painted red. Just like she always told me her dress and heels were yellow. And I just have to believe
her about it. I have to believe her because the photo is in black and white.
“It’s been over 72 hours,” I told the police officer at the desk. “So we can file the whole
thing.”
He blinked at us, and blinked over the picture of my grandmother. “You didn’t have to wait
72 hours,” he said.
And then I thought about it and realized no one ever did tell me to wait 72 hours before
reporting my grandmother missing. Kim held my hand and gave my elbow a squeeze.
“I thought,” I mumbled off. “Television, I guess. They always say to wait 72 hours.” It was
true. I probably heard it in Law & Order and thought it was actual law.
The officer didn’t look amused. “You report a missing person as soon as you think they’re
missing,” he said. “You don’t have to wait.”
He fished out a clipboard from under his desk and handed it to me. It had a little blue
ballpoint pen attached by a chain. An application for a missing person, like it was a job offer.
All around us the police station bustled quietly. Keyboards clicking, telephones ringing. It
was weird how it sounded exactly like my own job. All the crimes in Los Angeles, the blood and
heat, all leaking out of the receiver ends of the telephones and into spreadsheets. Ergonomic
keyboards and lumbar-supporting chairs. Office work. Customer service. There was a donation box
for the police captain’s dog, who just had surgery.
“Who is this you said?” the police officer asked, his eyes scanning the photograph.
I began writing her name on the application. “My grandmother,” I said.
“How old is she?” he asked.
“77,” I said, “78.”

>> No.16013710

>>16013698
this is chapter 1, cont from "77," I said, "78"

The officer blinked hard and rubbed his forehead. “We usually try to use more updated
pictures,” he said. “You want people looking for a 70 year old grandma, you know? Not some young
little thing in a dress. You don’t got any other pictures?”
But that’s still her, it’s still the same woman, I didn’t say. I just said, “It’s the only picture we
have.”
Malia Interestado, age 77-78, sort of paler skin, black hair, black eyes, last seen in GreenPark
Retirement Community two weeks ago, but we had only noticed her missing a few days ago. As
soon as I finished the form, the police officer looked at us and asked, “Want me to be honest?”
“I’m sorry?” Kim said.
“Okay, be honest,” I said.
“You might wanna try Facebook.” The officer pursed his lips. “Instagrams, whatnot. A lot
of people find their family and friends like that.”
“And what do you guys do?” Kim asked, an edge in her voice.
“Hey, I’m just being honest,” he said. “We do a lot of things before doing,” he motioned at
the application, “this kind of thing.”
When we left back outside Kim said, “Well now you know they won’t do anything.” She
gave my hand another squeeze. “Fucking fuckpigs.”
“It’s what I thought,” I said. “I’m making flyers at work and everything, too. And the
manager of her apartment called me, he said I could come in and check her place out. Just to make
sure.”
Kim nodded with resolve. “Make sure you post something on Facebook, though, so you can
send it to me. I’ll share it.”
I wanted to ask her what the point of that would be, since I was literally the only family my
grandma had in LA. Everyone had already moved out, into the cheap midwest or back into some
violent south. But I nodded and thanked her.
The construction of the new Metro line was far away, somewhere downtown, things drilling
and beeping, male shouting and laughter. A schoolbell rang. And there was no wind at all. It was
noon and verything was muggy and still like a hot mouth. I squeezed Kim’s hand and she softly took
it back, like she had suddenly realized what we had been doing.
“Was that really the only picture you had of her?” she said.
“Menopause, remember?” I said. A Metro bus rolled by with no one inside. The busdriver
wore a purple-and-gold Lakers N95 mask. Kim saw it too and we both took ours out and slipped
them on.

>> No.16013716
File: 78 KB, 1280x720, FDF5D24B-7CF2-4EAC-863C-C51986411DEB.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
16013716

>>16013698
I want MORE. GIVE IT TO ME

>> No.16013752

>>16013716
“Menopause?” Kim said, her voice a little muffled by the mask.
I grabbed her hand and shook it hard. “I’ve eaten worms, I failed my first driving test
because I crashed into a wall, and my grandma burns all the pictures we take of her.”
Her eyes were blank, then worried, then lit up, a little amused. “I forgot about that,” she
said, a little embarrassed at my gesture. We had met back in college, in a creative writing course, and
the professor had the whole class do an ice breaker, two truths and a lie. My lie was that I had eaten
worms before, and Kim was the only one who caught it. For some reason, she could just read me. I
explained to her that my grandma had a hysterectomy at 30 years old which made her menopause
happen early, which meant her body began bloating and sagging, so much so that she had refused to
take pictures anymore. She wanted no documentation of her body
post-menopause—“post-fertility.” She dressed all in black, every day, because it was slimming. We
spent an entire evening one time burning her Polaroids like it was a game, seeing how long we could
keep the flame burning until it singed our fingers. Kim thought it was the funniest thing when I first
told her that, she actually started crying, saying, I need to meet your crazyass grandma.
Kim was still smiling, but the memory wasn’t as funny anymore.
“We should get to work,” I said. She nodded and took her phone out.
“We don’t have to split an Uber,” I reminded her.
7
“No,” she smiled, “actually the company set me up with a driver.” She scrunched her face,
embarrassed by the fact. She tapped a few times on her phone and then put it back into her inside
pocket.
I snorted. “A fucking driver?”
“But I tip him really good!”
“Have to start eating the rich at some point,” I said, and we laughed.
Kim had started her job in some real estate firm because she couldn’t find anything with her
Art History degree after college, and she just kept climbing and climbing. She started wearing blazers
and those fancy shoes with the red bottoms, heels so big that in every company party she invited me
to we were always the same height.
“He can give you a ride, though, after he drops me off? I mean,” she started whispering,
“he’s paid for the entire day.” She grinned.
I took my MetroPass out of my wallet and waved it like it was gold. “Paid for the entire
year.” We laughed and laughed until we weren’t anymore. We were just looking at each other. Kim
was wiping tears away with just her fingertips, still smiling. She said, “Let me know what happens.” I
wanted to kiss her, only because it felt like I had no words to say what I wanted to. But then a black
Audi pulled up with windows tinted so dark I knew it was for her.
She asked again if I wanted a ride and I said no. We hugged and she got inside, already
taking her phone out and calling someone up. The Audi drove away, slowly, like it could have been
waiting for me.

>> No.16013760

>>16013752
I waited for the Metro to come. I had already told everyone I was going to be late. When the
Metro came, I stepped in and I swiped my pass and the display blinked red. I swiped it again and
8
again: red, red. The driver spoke through a Metro-branded N95 mask: “Three bucks, man.” I fed the
little slot three wrinkled dollar bills and then the automated plastic curtains were drawn and I was
blasted by thin antiseptic spray that smelled oven cleaner. Once it was over I sat in the far back, and
watched the city pass by. Flashes of road, steel, hi-visibility vests and hardhats, steel rods like
alphabets wrapped in blue construction tarps. Homeless, old ladies in leather sandals or thick
sneakers. Little doggies getting walked by people who were very good at looking forward, never to a
side.
There were some more things I wanted to talk about, things I couldn’t ask the officer, or
even my family. Things I wanted to share with Kim, but I knew that there was a line now. Certain
things we couldn’t talk about anymore. Like, what happens to my grandmother’s rent? Her bills?
Was I in charge? What happens to her money? the things in her house? I knew the normal answer.
Garbage. Maybe in my closet, in shoeboxes. Storage, probably. Some squat little sun-bleached
storage closet out in Pasadena with a slide-up door and a padlock. A dollar a month for the first
twelve months, then 7.99 every month after, but till when? till forever? Passing down a storage
closet like an heirloom through the generations. Like it was an old castle keep. Someone would
forget, though. Someone would have to forget to keep the payment up. Either, me, my sister—our
future kid’s kids. Someone always forgot. And then everything owned by my grandmother will be
sold or dumped into a landfill. Compressed into cubes, or tossed out into ocean gyres. My parents:
Pabla and Frankie. Maternal grandparents: Malia and Francisco. Paternal grandparents: Daisy and
Eriberto. Maternal great-grandparents: Tonia and Rogelio. Paternal great-grandparents: Susana and
Roberto. And I think my great-great-grandfather’s name was Alfredo. I can’t remember the names
of anyone else past him. I forgot.

(end chapter 1)

>> No.16013812

I wistfully wax my purple balls and cock until transmission into outer space commences..5..4..3..2..1..lift off purple rocket cock squeezing my symphonic diaphragm of constipated illuminatrix, the engines run on di-trimethylene-trypococaine and my balls are blue and my cocks gone real lame I'm bludgeoning my bollocks in a jail in a jail i'm aloone I'm aloooning I'm going insaaane I'm turning bluey purple till I'm violet in the face
my name is kor de ville and I'm writing in spaaaaaaaace

>> No.16013854

>>16013812

Based vocab. Got any more of this?

>> No.16013934
File: 9 KB, 215x234, soijak14.png [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
16013934

>>16013854
Heh, that guy's vocab isn't as great as he thinks, Will Kore thought to himself whilst fondling his exuberant genital package (in jail). Will Korr was thrown in the slammer for his illustrious vocation in widget enumeration, for which he practiced in a rather repulsively slipshod fashion but which his boss (mummy, he called her) said was very useful and amusing and mischievous and bookish, rakish, rackety back slappety slip slap, cock and ball blistering babybuttcheek bastardly good, she had said. And so William Koran felt his egotistical pelvic ramblings to be worthy of his own imperative congenial precariousesesesses (ostensibly) since mother was prone to eminently catasplabifferious helpings of indubitably honest, worthwhile, and even ghastly degrees of praise for her sweet boy-de-doy-de-doo, Korinth Wilhelm, particularly for his most fervent, extravagant, and lambastically spastically flatter-bam-boom-rastefariastic and ecclesiastically satisfactory vocabulatorial and gladatorial bouts in writ-wrot-wrippey-ruff-ruffing, aka writing, a field for which Wilkor Hammersnatch Bigpussy "Weebles" Blobkins Wilson knew himself to be extraordinaranjastically, devilishly, jolly well bucko big boy i'm a big boy now i wear big boy pants do you, do you pee pee in your poo poo big boy panty wanties too too doo doo pee pee poo poo, terribly, strikingly, mucho macho bing bang whip whop good, he knew.

>> No.16013941

Nofap and its consequences have been a disaster for the human race.
Since time immemorial supposed guru's and magicians have dissuaded countless men from dispensing their seminal fluid freely and liberally. They did so out of naked self-interest, for their own mystic prowess derived from guided masturbation. When the priest says masturbation is sin, when the rabbi or guru says life force is drained from coming, they are perpetuating an ancient conspiracy against the penile gland.
Now that you know this truth you can become as I. Take your shaft and place your cranium as close to your second head as you can, and perhaps you will see the face of God in the frenulum of your prepuce.

>> No.16014125

why are these replies such trash?

>> No.16014179

>>16014125

Because this is /lit/

>> No.16014196

>>16012879
What accent should I be hearing this in?

>> No.16014378

>>16012879
>>16013854
>>16013941


Verily my scrotum is disdainful of plebians. The masquerade of womanhood appears supremely farcical as I nonplussedly fold myself like a chair to study my own perineum.
Woe is me who sought the secrets of aetherium through masturbation, who can say whether the ancients circumsided infants to dissuade them from autoerotic stimulation.
Some questions can't be answered, but as soon as I ask a vision out of spiritus mundi troubles my sight. And oh what rough strokes, their hour come round at last, march towards my glands to be struck?

>> No.16014396

>>16013698
Love your first paragraph (although I would just end it with "And I just have to believe
her about it, because the photo is in black and white") and the description of the police station. Some of the descriptions in the dialogue part are a little cliche/wooden, like "The officer pursed his lips" and "Kim asked, and edge in her voice", neither of which really add anything to the scene. Overall it's very promising, I'd read more of this.

---

First bit of a story, not totally sure where I'm going with this yet:

Below the rattle of carts, beeping barcode scanners, wailing infants and the intercom 80's music, Gabe could hear a layer of compacted sound, a primary hum innate to such buildings as grocery stores, bowling alleys, doctor’s offices and banks. He tried to listen to this. His limbs functioned on cruise control, scanning items in a blur, his mind consciously narrowing to focus on the central tone, the world melting away from perception until…

Hannah swung her hairy chin and single thick neck roll towards Gabe, and said, “I drink coffee for those around me. I am caffeinated for your benefit.”

“That so,” Gabe said.

“My blood type is Starbucks. Well not really. I don’t really go there that much. Actually I hardly ever go there.”

“Mmm,” Gabe said.

Gabe and Hannah, cashier and courtesy clerk, funneled Crown Hill through their checkout line. The gang was all here. They had the Old Russian Lady, referred to as O.R.L., whose grasp of English encompassed only the words “no” and “bad,” and who would pay with an E.B.T. card that often bounced, which meant that Gabe had to somehow explain this to her, a bizarre ordeal. There was Tony, gray-ponytailed, a bus driver, who told Gabe a little secret: any Metro bus, you can get on with a dollar bill and not the full $2.50, nine times outta ten the guy’ll let you on, man. It’s true. Marcus came through earlier, a huge gay black guy, made some comment about how Shontelle “still ain’t flushed that shit by now?” and strode away, leaving Shontelle cradling her pregnant belly horrified, her next customer waiting to be noticed. Gabe was halfway through his shift, in the merciless noon. It was bitterly blue outside.

>> No.16014600

>>16014125

Post something better then, fagit.

>> No.16014698

>>16014600
I did, I'm op you faggot

>> No.16014762

>>16012879

This doesn't have any story it to it, they are just statements. There is no action, no characters in the sense that anyone does anything.
It's basically all X person existed and sometimes Y. It's not engaging. What is it about?

>> No.16014766

>>16013934

Perhaps

>> No.16015541

My wife was buried under five feet of genuine Earth soil.

starting line, starting a new short story, good?

>> No.16015608

>>16015541
what does genuine earth soil convey that "my wife was buried five feet deep" doesn't?

>> No.16015716

>>16015608
The idea is that it's a space story, she was buried on a different planet and it's some tradition to import soil. Do you feel more "oh I want to read more to figure out what that means" or a "this is shit writing"

>> No.16015718

>>16015541

Only if it's about aristocrats in outer space that import soil from the earth to be buried in as a status symbol.

Otherwise see >>16015608

>> No.16015726

>>16015716
>>16015718

Ayy I guessed it right lol.

This is a great example of how what is and isn't good writing depends on the context. I think it's a great first sentence for a sci-fi story.

>> No.16016366

>>16015716
That's actually pretty interesting, I like it.

>> No.16016385

>>16012879
great stuff. go publish.

>>16013128
bretty good, but i want more. post more? add more?

>>16013561
very pretty description. i'd love to see a story with this much image-intensity. just dont get too lost in your own descriptions!

>> No.16016763

Need help with an unfinished sonnet. Any and all advice welcome.

When our love died as Fate had then decreed
Our string, undone, suspended two like lives
With one in lands far from her lover’s reach
The other watched her leave with tear-filled eyes.

Her beauty was the sunlight’s warm caress
Then Aphrodite weeps - her tears the dew
(empty line)
‘But could not mend my broken heart anew

These thoughts then turn to nights, which we had spent
Asleep in true embrace - oh, memories do fail -
Her chest draws breath, then flutters - sweet content
Eludes my mind, her departure prevails

>> No.16016784

>>16012879
Best description of hell... ever!

>> No.16016843

>>16016763
>empty line
"an Icarian folly which melts my breast"

>> No.16016893

>>16016843
Thank you for the suggestion, I have included it
Also realized one of the lines isn't in iambic pentameter, that's what i get for writing while I'm drunk

>> No.16016996

"Girls," he calls out. They all look up at him. "Do any of you wish to stay and serve your king?" They look at each other, but none of them offer a word. "Then off with you, back to your families. Find work where you can, though I'm sure any employer would be lucky to have workers as charming as you."

They nod and quickly disperse, leaving only two: a pretty blonde girl, and an dark-haired girl with tan skin who looks similar to an Aljazian. Must be a royal servant of some kind.

"You two are coming with me," he says. "I've got a banquet to plan." The blonde smiles at him, but the dark girl glares, as if she knows what he's really after. He needs to keep an eye on both of them, then; the obedient one will make a good mate, while the other has a rebellious streak he'll have to tame.

He can see it already.

Jonas decides that the imperious attitude of the dark girl can not be allowed to fester and must be dealt with now. He grabs her hand and yanks her through the hallway and into an empty room. He slams the door behind him and flips a table, trapping her in the room and grabs her arm.

"Let me go or I'll scream!" she yells.

He flies into action, kissing her deeply, pushing his tongue into her mouth, and pinning her arms above her head as he does so. "You can't get rid of me that easily," he says, continuing to kiss her.

She continues to struggle, but stops when she starts to enjoy it, realizing it's futile anyway. "Must... submit..." she thinks.

"I think you'll enjoy being my bride," he says, smiling. "Now, let me see what I can do about those rebellious tendencies of yours..."

He flips up her dress, revealing cleanly shaved virgin lips. "My virgin bride," he says. "Now let's get you ready for your new role..." He slides two fingers into her easily and starts pumping them in and out, while rubbing around her clit with his thumb. She pants and moans, before finally coming to a quivering climax. He puts his mouth over hers to muffle her moans. "Not loud enough," he says, continuing to finger her. He slides a third finger in and curls it up, hitting her G-spot. She bucks and moans louder, making him put his other hand over her mouth. Finally, she starts to quiet down. "We can't have someone hearing and finding us like this," he says. Her face looks like she's enjoying being taken by him.

>> No.16018376

>>16016996
offensively trite, soulless garbage.
stop writing forever

>> No.16018376,1 [INTERNAL] 

>>16013934
Korwil here. Let's be friends.