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Daily Deviation
Daily Deviation
August 26, 2011
The suggester writes: Spilled Milk 2.0 by *beautyinreview is horrifying in its realization of a fear that we have all entertained, at one time or another, and yet eloquent and striking in its tone of mundanity, as well as in its language and imagery.
Literature Text
The milk in the backseat
is getting warm, condensation
pearling on the plastic jug
and dripping onto the bread.
His glass doll eyes do not see
this now, slumped against the
steering wheel, windshield
scattered across his lap like
candy from a pinata. His face
is stretched in a caricature of
surprise, saying, But I was
only going for milk.
She is impatient, pacing their
living room in her high heels,
smoothing her dress with her
trembling hands, casting acidic
looks at the green numbers on
the stove that insist on marching
onwards though he should have
been back fifteen minutes ago.
He only went for milk, down the
street, and they are going to be
late for their own party, and she
is furious, but that fury is tinged
with an icy vein of panic that is
threatening to choke her, and
she checks the clock again, the
scream of sirens in the distance
pressing against unhearing ears
as the floor mats soak up the last
warm and living parts of him,
and the milk warms in the backseat.
is getting warm, condensation
pearling on the plastic jug
and dripping onto the bread.
His glass doll eyes do not see
this now, slumped against the
steering wheel, windshield
scattered across his lap like
candy from a pinata. His face
is stretched in a caricature of
surprise, saying, But I was
only going for milk.
She is impatient, pacing their
living room in her high heels,
smoothing her dress with her
trembling hands, casting acidic
looks at the green numbers on
the stove that insist on marching
onwards though he should have
been back fifteen minutes ago.
He only went for milk, down the
street, and they are going to be
late for their own party, and she
is furious, but that fury is tinged
with an icy vein of panic that is
threatening to choke her, and
she checks the clock again, the
scream of sirens in the distance
pressing against unhearing ears
as the floor mats soak up the last
warm and living parts of him,
and the milk warms in the backseat.
Literature
couldn't blue
i draw a picture of
tomorrow morning:
a man in a silver box sells
75 cent coffee and bad bagels.
his shirt is the kind of blue no one ever
tried to name a crayon after.
dust-plastic blue,
tried to love you
(couldn't)
blue.
and the morning is that same color,
the color of canned lightning-bugs and
unfiltered cigarettes and desire,
because that is all you
draw with couldn't blue.
i pay him 1.25 in change and purse-lint
so that a fourth-world factory can make more
silver boxes to sell more things
more stale blueberry muffins.
and he will keep gathering change
in 75 cent purse-lint increments
in the small sinking townships of
Literature
Birdcage
Nothing ever happens the way you read in the history books. In war there are never two armies, there is only a field of men. Never a number of dead; but individual lives snuffed out. That is what the subject of history is, years shelved and decimalized. Birth and death, graphed to the simplicity of lines. Great wars a footnote to the next great war. The achievements of men and women plotted out against the bookmark of day, month and year.
And somewhere amongst this, my mother breathed. Somewhere danced in now long-closed nightclubs, laughed at jokes told by a younger version of my Father. And then the unpin-able moment she fell in love with
Literature
Questions I Never Asked My Grandfather
My grandfather sits in a wheelchair by the window in the old people's home with his chin leaned into his chest, mumbling incessantly and unintelligibly to himself and drooling a little from the right corner of his mouth. Mom can't come here anymore. She just breaks down at the sight of him so I sometimes come by myself and sit with him in silence for a while.
It's a sad end to a long and hard life, and I morbidly think to myself that if a political party stepped forth now with the legalization of euthanasia on its agenda, I'd vote for it. After two strokes and a hemorrhage, topped with severe senile dementia, what is the point of letting peo
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The second version (fourth or fifth edit) of this piece: [link]
Thoughts on this? Is it an improvement? Is the situation clearer? Do you care at all about what has happened?
© Jessica McGale
EDIT: Was, to my great surprise and gratitude and delight, featured as a Daily Deviation! Thanks so much to =OritPetra for making the suggestion, and to everyone that has subsequently read, faved and commented on this piece.
Thoughts on this? Is it an improvement? Is the situation clearer? Do you care at all about what has happened?
© Jessica McGale
EDIT: Was, to my great surprise and gratitude and delight, featured as a Daily Deviation! Thanks so much to =OritPetra for making the suggestion, and to everyone that has subsequently read, faved and commented on this piece.
© 2011 - 2024 beautyinreview
Comments48
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I do not usually view or read literature deviations, let alone critique them, but this one grabbed me like nothing ever before - It grabbed me, it shook me, and it did not let me go.
I first saw it as a humble little thumbnail at the bottom of the DA home page, quietly sitting there with its text slowly scrolling upward, daring me to read. I started reading right then and there and I could not stop...The words you so carefully chose to use provided just the right amount of imagery to provoke me to the core. After the first fullstop, I was immersed. I kept reading until the thumbnail's limits maxed out and the words stopped abruptly at "He only went for milk, down the str" Literally cut off at "street"! My mental picture show was just as harshly interrupted. So, I hurried to open it up in full, wondering all the while why I did not think to do so earlier and realizing it was because I was too hypnotized by the words I was reading in that tiny little thumb.
When I had finally finished reading it, I was more than convinced that I should go and check out the rest of your gallery. I checked up on the earlier version of this piece and I can say that this is definitely an improvement. A stunning and carefully composed piece of literature work like this can only come once in a long while, so I am grateful to you, the author, for making the effort to produce, improve, and share it with us.
I, for one, will be more inclined to read literature deviations on DA after seeing such a shining example of what I have been missing.
Cheers!