Young Writers Society

What can I say I'm a one trick pony.

2019 thread.

1. Nine of coins
2. Six of swords
3. Page of wands
4. Queen of coins
5. Ten of wands'
6. The star
7. Ten of coins
8. Four of swords
9. King of coins
10. King of cups
11. The sun
12. Two of coins
13. Judgment
14. The moon
15. Ten of cups
16. Eight of coins
17. The world
18. Two of wands
19. Page of coins
20. Three of swords
21. Six of cups
22. Seven of coins
23. Six of wands
24. Four of cups
25. The hermit
26. Death
27. Ace of coins
28. The devil
29. Page of swords
30. Two of cups

Nine of coins

There is enough
in grey fog clung
to dark wood or
a cottage with a hole
over the sink that could
let anything in.

There is enough
in a faded quilt made
by someone else's hands who
has already lived here, has
loved here, has
left.

There is enough here
to let her be whoever
she'd like to be.


See also: Nine of coins (2019)

Six of swords

If I could see the future in a pool of water
cupped between palms, I could tell that this
decision is the one that will set my life straight
or maybe it's the last thing I will ever do.

Sometimes, the bravest decision is escape.


See also: Six of swords (2019)

Page of wands

The difference was the way she went to him
in the beginning, she was a match struck
against a tree branch she had climbed
to the wavering peak of a pine. She was
a decision just made; a girl pushed from
the bridge into the swirling October sky.

Her mother had said, this is the life you'll live.

The difference was the way she spoke to him
in the beginning, her youth bore confidence
pinned against her ribs by railroad ties. She knew
what she wanted and it was anything but this
life that had been laid crisp and white like
sheets brought back from the cleaner on fifth.

Her mother said, this is a sacrifice we all make.

The difference was the way she felt to him
in the beginning, a woman brought up in
expectation. Brought down by desire.
She tore herself from a glossy high street
catalog and sought the kind of magic
that would set a girl aflame.

Her mother had said, what is the point in
asking for what you want?

Queen of coins

Motherhood
was a torrential downpour a
car without enough gasoline and
four miles to the nearest station
with a husband who flew off the handle
at three. Motherhood
was cottonwood, cast from the tree
that grew in the backyard and dusted
grass like summer snowfall, a perfect
thing before the lawnmower driven
with a beer in hand and a damn it to
hell, every year it's the same.

I was not meant to be your mother,
this was a mistake.

Motherhood
would be spring rain in an
open window, dried lavender in the
eaves, a quilt made by hand. Motherhood
would be worn hands supporting elbows,
standing in the cottage door, late season snow
gathering on noses and the crest of a girl waiting
to be born. It would be shy kisses at midnight when
the moon cast everything young and quiet, time
held in equipoise. It would be a
realization that what had looked like incompetence
was merely an issue of circumstance.

You cannot build a beautiful home when
the foundation keeps moving.

Ten of wands

How simple it is to forget
beginnings, when steeped
in an end.

Cyclical; Death is a wolf on
two legs keeping close account
of her magic, and her magic, and
hundreds of years turning at once.
It didn't used to be this way but
each breaking requires a different
repair.

How simple it is to forget
beginnings, when steeped
in an end.

Cyclical; Death is a wolf on
two legs keeping careful account
of a woman who forgets what it
feels like to die. She has been dying
every moment since the first and this
is nothing new. The women in the cottage
never know what's coming.

How simple it is to forget
beginnings, when steeped
in an end.


See also: Ten of wands (2019)

The star

She has come
unstuck. (Time,
in the forest, is
strange; do you
hear the way
it turns her
inside out? She is
barely recognizable
from the girl
who walked into the
trees with fire in her belly
hot enough to birth a
thousand years.) She
has come unstuck.

Ten of coins

Hang the stand of
hives with black; there
is too much here for
one woman (she is a
glutton, her heart more
full of wonder than it
has earned). She has told
the bees of the saplings that
bloomed bright red apples, and
the television in the sitting room
with channels from a year she's
never seen. (She has told them
of the woman who has broken
through the window of her life
and she has kept her secret; she
is an open book and
a liar.)

There must be someone left
to tell them when she's gone.


See also: Ten of coins (2019)

Four of swords

Honeycomb
on her tongue is more
like home than any
place that has ever
been mine.

(If that were true, I would
never be tearing it to the
ground, like the curtains that
were here when I moved in.)


See also: Four of swords (2019)

King of coins

The forest is a woman
who gets what she wants --
centuries
of magic tucked in slim-leafed
ferns and a lake of mirror
glass. She has stitched it
a pattern in a simple quilt to
lay over the back of her chair:
women bound by anger are
so predictable, easy to
manipulate.
She is slow to anger, but her
vengeance is a soliloquy in morse code.
(You made a mistake, girl,
letting her in.)

King of cups

She is two women;
page and king embodied in
bodies doubled over
a single space. (You have
seen her in the corner of
your eye; you have fallen
in love with a mistake in
time.)

The sun

It should be more than this
war held between the shoulder
blades of a woman older than
she deserves to be. She should
have had more than a past
rewritten by a girl she doesn't get
to be. This should be more
important to someone other than
her. There is peace in a decision
that changes a life. There is
value in defending
something that is only
important to you.


See also: The sun (2019)

These are all so good, but I looooove Queen of Coins.

You've got some great imagery pairings Lauren, and all of your poems are so snappy they feel like very cohesive individually and together. Loved Ten of Coins & King of Coins as favorites so far - love the progression of imagery, and these lines are perfect;

She is slow to anger, but her
vengeance is a soliloquy in morse code.

Two of coins

Daffodil is for mornings full
of little things to do; three
empty teacups in the sink and
coffee stains on the kettle. Honey
from the hives in the garden soothes
a throat sore from long days whispering
to the bees. An August rain is respite
though it drains through holes to patch
in the old roof. There is too much
to be asked of the sentinel, and the roses
in the garden have one more bud than
she can bear.