ONE WORLD

ONE WORLD: A GLOBAL ANTHOLOGY OF SHORT STORIES. PUBLISHED BY NEW INTERNATIONALIST OF OXFORD, ENGLAND IN APRIL-MAY 2009. BEING A COLLECTION OF SHORT STORIES BY 23 WRITERS FROM 14 DIFFERENT COUNTRIES UNIQUELY
COMPOSED, ORGANIZED, AND EDITED ON THE INTERNET.

(Based on the following prompt: Choose both a vegetable that you like and one youy dislike. Use these vegetables in your challenge piece. You can be as realistic or fanciful. There is only one catch: you can't use the vegetables names. The length of your write should not be any longer than 30 lines.)

THE NAMING OF PLANTS: THE VEGETABLES

When God ordered Adam to name the plants,
Adam obeyed with trepidation. After all,
This command came after the debacle
Over a fruit called “Apple,”
Before his forced trek east of Eden
And Eve’s unsightly regurgitations
And obscene stomach bulge.

For the most part, the naming of vegetables
Gave him no concern except for two:
His most and least favorite. (Eve liked
Them all, however, especially the long
Round ones shaped like the appendage
Adam most cherished but which she
Suspected was really a serpent in disguise.)

A furry creature often stole
Unbidden into his vegetable patch
To nibble curiously upon the pointed end
Of this orange vegetable with the
Curious green thatch on top. Adam thought,
“I think I’ll call it ‘Tasty Rabbit Treat,’”
After he saw a rabbit eat this plant.

The last vegetable Adam named was his
Least favorite. The reason was obvious.
It was red and round like the dreaded Fruit
Of the Forbidden Tree. Unsure, he called it
“Apple No.2,” which would cause great
Confusion in the hearts and minds of
fruit and vegetable lovers from then on.

Christina's World

After Andrew Wyeth

On a hill on the horizon
the large clapboard house—
pale mustard-colored, muted, ghostly.

The prairie grass
leans wave-like to the right,
bleached no doubt by an Indian sun.

Panning to the left
her august figure rules the landscape.
Mysteriously in repose,

she dreams, but of what:
the ecstasy of walking,
the gift of her two useless legs?

Sequence

Lovers
sitting on a park bench
pigeons at their feet

Where lovers meet
kernels of corn for sale
at the pigeon park

Lovers embrace:
the pigeons overhead
take no notice

Fall in the park
leaves settle on empty benches
and two lovers

December chill
only one occupied bench
even as it snows

Cold in the park
the pigeons have all gone
so too the lovers

To Inspiration

To Inspiration (for you, my Muse) There is no poetry without pain. For you are with me always, here in candlelight or by the glow of dawn, and yes even in shadows, casting out moonbeams on silver rippled waters as I write this song through these vacant eyes and with this burdened heart. I contemplate this as a child, without boundaries yet not spoiled, in the hour of my dormant pity, encased in its own formlessness, dreaming with eyes shut, my heart fluttering like the labored wings of dragons. Ample and intimate your voice, shiny and smooth as fragile stones beneath a stream of rushing currents, uplifting even when stirred. I wait and listen for the lexicon of your smile; your words provoke in me a frisson of inspiration. You vanish the crepuscular night. I wake to the sweet smell of your breath, swallowed by some haunting dream you painted on the inside of my eyelids, barely leaving an imprint. My tears now sleep, emotion waits. I need to wake again to this vacant soul drowning when you're absent that I may always have you here with me, to hold you up to a world who may not otherwise ever know you.