24/7, Divination 15

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 15 is to write a divination-themed prose poem that uses water.

In Her Image (99 words)

It's only plastic, forgotten for years. Pink bikini painted on, demure ankles crossed, arms destroyed. No silken hair floats above the mud, no head and neck at all. But it is shapely, wasp-waisted among digger wasps, full-hipped with still-articulating legs. Mirror of broken souls. Across the pond, pudgy knees sink in mud; a shapeless smock discolors. A face smiles wide-eyed in the silt. Minnows make it ripple with water wrinkles, a crone at age four. The girl sees who she is, sparkling in sun, darkened by clouds, enchanted as roseate skimmers flit. She scampers home dressed in invisible pearls.


Drowned doll photographed in April 2006.

Key to 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!

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