Pagoda

Photo by Rachel Cotterill
More of her photos can be found on her Flickr Photostream
and visit her Rachel's Ramblings blog
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Suggested prompt...
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Step inside this special place and let it inspire your creativity...

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The old gray tree leans towards the bright red orange screens, wishing for colors. The fly loops in and out of the pagoda but then lights on the gray trunk. The breezes stir the calligraphy on the octagonal table inside, and Chien Lung puts down his pen and rubs his eyes. He looks down at the writing and knows he could do better, but it's not bad. He loves to write, and enjoys every brush stroke. He gets up and goes down the creek 100 yards to the little tavern where he can get piso. He watches the water and knows life is good.

Lorelei

One week after the photo or picture is posted I will pick one offering to put beneath the image. This is a way of celebrating exceptional creativity. Any and all posts are available for your creative mind to make an offering at any time (even ones where a writing has been placed on the front page like this one). If you are new here and want to offer to every image here, feel free. We are writers, WRITE! If this is your exceptional writing posted here on the Front Page Pictures, Poetry & Prose invites you to include the Exceptional Writing Award Button on your blog. Visit the Exceptional Writing Award post for the details and the button to download.

Panda

Photo by Rachel Cotterill

More of her photos can be found on herFlickr Photostream

and visit her Rachel's Ramblings blog

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Suggested prompt...

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Use him in your writing today.

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Do not pander to a panda
It will surely raise his dander
I’m saying this in perfect candor
Stating only certain truth
Check the claw and check the tooth
Black and white the furry suit
Very chic and awfully cute
But this fact I have to share
This bloody thing’s a great big bear!

~ Chercheur de bonheur

One week after the photo or picture is posted I will pick one offering to put beneath the image. This is a way of celebrating exceptional creativity. Any and all posts are available for your creative mind to make an offering at any time (even ones where a writing has been placed on the front page like this one). If you are new here and want to offer to every image here, feel free. We are writers, WRITE! If this is your exceptional writing posted here on the Front Page Pictures, Poetry & Prose invites you to include the Exceptional Writing Award Button on your blog. Visit the Exceptional Writing Award post for the details and the button to download.

A Meal

Photo by Rachel Cotterill
More of her photos can be found on her
Flickr Photostream and visit her Rachel's Ramblings blog
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Suggested prompt...
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Include eating or sharing a meal in your writing today.
Perhaps something to do with family, a dinner out with your darling,
a meal that you never thought you would have with your inlaws... etc...

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1994 in the Central African Republic. Our team of sociolinguistic surveyors arrived in a remote village planning to do a group interview on language use. We were told that the men were all out in the field drinking palm wine. So we had to wait for the next day. In the late afternoon the other female team member and I got the crazy idea to cook a local dish - Gozo (manioc/cassava foufou). Our guide organized all the necessities - Manioc flour, stones for a stove, fire wood, a sieve, a large cooking pot, and a large wooden spoon. We did not need to pound the flour, but we nearly forgot to sieve it. We had quite a few spectators - two white women cooking on an open fire? Most village women had never seen a white person before. Can white women cook? They did not think so. When the Foufou was nearly ready, we decided to open two tins of lentil soup to accompany it, instead of a local sauce that would have taken several hours to prepare. Suddenly we had the even crazier idea to invite the village chief (who was present and not drinking palm wine) to eat with us. In an African context a very normal matter of politeness and hospitality - except when you are not even sure how your meal will turn out. To our own surprise he accepted. So our team, our guide and the village chief sat down together and ate as is normal there - from one big bowl with our hands. It tasted quite good but the lentil soup must have been unusual for the village chief.

The next day in the morning we were finally ready to start our group interview. The village chief gave a moving introduction speech concluding it with the words: "Formerly white people came and treated us like monkeys. Today another type of white people has come. They are white people with whom we can put our hands in the same bowl (which is an important sign of friendship)." We were all deeply touched.

~ malianta

One week after the photo or picture is posted I will pick one offering to put beneath the image. This is a way of celebrating exceptional creativity. Any and all posts are available for your creative mind to make an offering at any time (even ones where a writing has been placed on the front page like this one). If you are new here and want to offer to every image here, feel free. We are writers, WRITE! If this is your exceptional writing posted here on the Front Page Pictures, Poetry & Prose invites you to include the Exceptional Writing Award Button on your blog. Visit the Exceptional Writing Award post for the details and the button to download.

Skiing

Photo by Rachel Cotterill

More of her photos can be found on her

Flickr Photostream and visit her Rachel's Ramblings blog

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Suggested prompt...

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Write today and include skiing or snowboarding in your verse or prose.

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Skiing

She promised we’d have fun.
My best friend Olivia,
the child model with the perfect smile
and hair that flipped
perfectly over her shoulder.
She invited me on a ski trip.
She said we’d love the snow,
and I’d be as good as her.

I was thirteen years old
with braces: yellow, pink and green
elastics on metal, restraining
my adolescent buck teeth.
My mother dressed me in
my step sister’s decade-old
plum-purple snow suit.
It swished and wooshed
between my thighs,
cutting circulation off at elastic
boundaries at my ankles and wrists.

Our first ride down:
“Bunny Slope.”
Not enough for me.
Next I attempted a steeper incline:
a plumb drop towards
cabins below,
a maze of rocks and trees.
Snow plow failed,
skiis fell sliding down the hill.
There, on the ice, my kneecap popped
out of the socket—
it was an abnormal shape—
that boney sphere sitting asymmetrical
under thin blue skin.

I knew Olivia wouldn’t climb uphill
to find me.
The humiliating part was
calling out for help,
between gulps of snot and saliva:
realizing I never would be Olivia.

~ Kristin Dombrowski

One week after the photo or picture is posted I will pick one offering to put beneath the image. This is a way of celebrating exceptional creativity. Any and all posts are available for your creative mind to make an offering at any time (even ones where a writing has been placed on the front page like this one). If you are new here and want to offer to every image here, feel free. We are writers, WRITE! If this is your exceptional writing posted here on the Front Page Pictures, Poetry & Prose invites you to include the Exceptional Writing Award Button on your blog. Visit the Exceptional Writing Award post for the details and the button to download.