Thursday, April 12, 2012

Lucky 7

My friend and fellow writer Marly Youmans, who so frequently comments on these pages, tagged me to play a little Internet game of the sort she so frequently engages in. I was to go to my current manuscript, go to the 7th or 77th page, count down 7 lines, and post what I found there. Since my manuscript of poems, A Likely Story, has not got 77 pages, I went to the 7th, still unnumbered, and counted down. I cheated a little, not counting the title or the number 1, for the first part of the poem, because seven from the top allowed me to finish a sentence.
Now I am supposed to come up with 7 writer friends to torment in this exact same way. Let's see if I can manage it.
Here are my lines:

Chronicle
1
She lay in bed not sleeping, though the moon
had risen and stars burned clear.
The room seemed wrong—too close
for autumn, and her arms were stiff.
Awake, she pried her fingers from the quilt’s
hard edge, and realized her anaconda,
Sam, was loose and she was in his mouth.

2 comments:

marly said...

Ack! Good cliff-hanger ending for the excerpt!

Robbi N. said...

Yes. But I think you only wanted the 7th line, didn't you, not the whole thing? And no one I tagged did it.