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Dargan
fat bald lawyer poet lover christian socialist
7 Posts • 9 Followers • 2 Following
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Challenge
Water
Dargan

River Elegy

A gnarled cottonwood stands sentry

at the head of Dirty Devil ravine.

It's huddled brethren, slightly healthier,

cling close to the pathetic creek,

an earth-toned trickle skipping

through sandstone toward Glen Canyon

and the captured Colorado.

The maps call it Lake Powell now,

ill-fitting tribute to Major John Wesley,

or anyone who could love this barren land

that offers comfort only in solitude.

The mighty force that dug the Grand Canyon,

reduced to a playground, flattened

out and blanded to a sickly green,

has been wiped from the red face of the Southwest.

No drop will reach the ocean, diverted

to spew from plastic rattlesnakes, sunning

on incongruous green patches in suburbs

from Los Angeles to Phoenix.

Heaven's river, holy and enchanted,

has only ashes in its mouth.

No molecule scraped from Utah's sandy cliffs

completes the long slide to the Sea of Cortes,

where a mother oyster waits, and Steinbeck's

divers mill about, smoking and drinking tequila.

Instead the lake stagnates; the silt descends,

slowly choking the drowned cottonwoods

that had offered their meager shade to Powell's camps.

Branches still stretch from their muddy deathbed,

reaching for sun they'll never know again. 

Challenge
Trident Media Group is the leading U.S. literary agency and we are looking to discover and represent the next bestsellers. Share a sample of your work. If it shows promise, we will be in touch with you.
Please include the following information at the end of your post: title, genre, age range, word count, author name, why your project is a good fit, the hook, synopsis, target audience, your bio, platform, education, experience, personality / writing style, likes/hobbies, hometown, age (optional)
Dargan in Trident Media Group

Maribel

(Deleted_

Challenge
Every word must contain a Q- none may be repeated
Dargan in Poetry & Free Verse

Conquistador Reconquered

Kumquat banquet,

quetzals, jonquils,

queued eloquently...

Iraq quickens qualms;

quietly, queries quiver.

Loquacious quotes 

conquer quietude.

Questing pique,

quirks equally opaque,

queue sequentially...

consequently,

quiet obloquy

requires quaffing Seroquel,

quizzical quills quieted.

Challenge
First Chapter: Share a first chapter of an unfinished book, one perhaps, with the right feed back you might be motivated to finish. #FirstChapter
Dargan in Long-Form Prose

Deleted

deleted

Challenge
What is home? Create a poem or a short story about home. Bring me there. Make me feel at home or not.
Dargan in Poetry & Free Verse

Home, To Picher, Oklahoma

Home,

to Picher, Oklahoma

Grandma Connell, whose tears

soaked a new beret at Fort Benning,

lived at Central and Cherokee with four cats

in a pistachio-painted A-frame house.

He saw her yesterday at a nursing home in Tulsa,

but the house and the cats, and Grandpa’s

hand-carved cherry table where Tollie

taught him chess and bridge while

three older brothers toiled in the lead mine

that sentenced this town to death, long

before the tornado carried out the execution--

they’re all gone.

The prairie wind scrubs at the ruins

with metallic dust

’til the air looks and smells like Fallujah

right before the Marines went in.

His unit followed them, patrolling day

after day on a street like this, but there

sweat was poured into renewal.

In Picher, even cleaning up is futile.

Challenge
Describe a flower garden, but do not use any color adjectives (i.e., don't use descriptive words like red, yellow, green). Ideas: Tell me how your body senses the garden? How does red feel? What is yellow? Imagine how it would feel to step into a flower garden without eyesight, then explain it to me. Get visceral...describe the scene either directly or indirectly. Be creative. :) Or go totally metaphorical with it. Think outside the box. Oh, and make it a micro-poem, too. Have fun!
Dargan in Poetry & Free Verse

How Does Your Garden Grow?

Dreaming, snuggled

buried deeply, warm-wrapped

tightly in this bed.

Sustenance stems from darkness,

cocooned in warmth, solitude.

Striving in sunward struggle,

burst into spring air, 

open to the world, 

drinking the light.

Challenge
We are a literary agency seeking fresh talent. In 200 words or more, demonstrate your writing talent. We will be in touch with any and all promising participants throughout the rest of this quarter.
Dargan in Publishing

Learn to be Mediocre

A lot of people, perhaps especially people who spend their lives in small towns, have a somewhat distorted view of the world. This is probably true in a lot of ways, but the sense in which I mean it is that people believe that the best they’ve seen of something is among the best there is. Everyone thinks the best cook they know could be a world class chef, or the best player on their church softball team could have made the majors with a couple of breaks. There’s somebody singing in your church choir or neighborhood karaoke bar just waiting to be discovered and record number one hits. Your girlfriend’s poetry should be anthologized with Tennyson or Plath.

For the most part, everyone is wrong. The range of expertise or skill within your own personal experience almost never reflects the entire range of humanity. Most people never meet someone that is really world-class at anything, and that’s fine. There are lots of levels of “really good” that enrich people’s lives. The lady that runs the Panther Drive-In, Angie Campbell, almost certainly couldn’t be Julia Child even if given the opportunity, but that doesn’t mean she doesn’t make the best Denver omelet I’ve ever tasted. I’m content with it being the best one I ever will taste. The fact that there’s someone out there who could make a better one, or make something that made me forget Denver omelets ever existed, simply isn’t relevant to my life.

I am 21 years or older.