24/7, Divination 12

I am participating in Folded Word's writing month event, called "24/7," during August. Participants spend the first 24 days of the month writing short works, then spend the final week in revisions. The second part of this entry gives more details.

I'm not required to give a central theme to the entries, but I chose the theme "Divinations" and am using a pair of dice to generate prompts (values shown below). My prompt for August 12 is to a write divination-themed prose poem that uses earth.

When Civilization Was Young (96 words)

Tender brushes clean, pails fill with spoil. Stiff flags make the world a grid. Fragments hide in protective casings. Under the open sky, a miniature marvel of gears and jointed frames remains. The archaeologists scratch their heads, ask, "What is it?" They mumble of Antikythera, blind to fingerprints long gone, to the loving touch of children who quizzed their toy as they spun its wheels. Their little Sphinx, riddles played out in carefree days: "Who will I be? What will I do?" Layers below, the remains of ancient answers wait to be lifted to the light.


The Haile 7G fossil dig site, location of the Florida Museum of Natural History's "Tapir Challenge." I spent a day as a dig volunteer in December 2006.

Dice values:

Blue Die
1 (CE logo). Twitter poetry (140 characters or fewer)
2. Twitter fiction (140 characters or fewer)
3. short poetry (8 lines or fewer)
4. prose poems (under 100 words)
5. micro fiction (40-100 words)
6. flash fiction (101-500 words)

Purple Die
1 (CE logo). Birth
2. Water
3. Air
4. Earth
5. Fire
6. Death

My Random House College Dictionary, Revised Edition, defines "divination" as 1. the attempt to foretell future events or discover hidden knowledge by occult or supernatural means; 2. augury; prophecy; 3. perception by intuition; instinctive foresight. One meaning of "occult" is "hidden." That gives me a broad range of interpretation.

Elissa Malcohn's Deviations and Other Journeys Promote Your Page Too










Vol. 1, Deviations: Covenant (2nd Ed.)
Vol. 2, Deviations: Appetite
Vol. 3, Deviations: Destiny
Vol. 4, Deviations: Bloodlines
Free downloads at the Deviations website and on Smashwords.

Go to Manybooks.net to access Covenant, Appetite, Destiny, and Bloodlines in even more formats!

Participant, Operation E-Book Drop. (Logo credit: K.A. M'Lady & P.M. Dittman.)

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