By Jaime, a member of Brand New Aspiring Writers

A chipper, albeit pert,
“It’s custard, ma’am,
not ice cream”
on the side
with our milkshakes.

Clarification and caring
disappear, like us around the corner,
as we drive away,
me giggling
and making lewd gestures
with my straw.

Read more from Jaime McDougall at Write Anyway

Carnival of Beauty

Others will seek consolation for pain,
haunting the wishbone moment,
numb to sense.

I turn into my own desolate soul, hearing myself
break apart-
unwritten
at the mental seams.

The repeated decrescendo
blasting against my ears-
screams echo and echo, echo, echo, echo,
until daylight broke.

Bless me, bless me, bless these wrists.
Mama, I think I am coming home.




Line one-Tiel Aisha Ansari with her lovely offering Rainmaker



Line two- Shakir Hasnain, a talented poet and friend, who wrote Mirror Writing, check it out. The first two lines are remarkable!



Line three- Shakir Hasnain who also graces us with another piece of his work,Flaw

Line four- Sara from Poets Who Blog

Line five- Sara's poetry blog The Shores of My Dreams

Line six-Skakir Hasnain at his third blog asks that you read the longing filled, exquitely crafted poem The Weatherman

Line seven- Rax, who never fails to amaze me, shares her poem Stitch

Line eight-KGT who shares with us an allegorical masterpiece, My Shameless Lion Pareto



Line nine-Sara with her third blog, non- poetry Aspiring Romance Writer


Line ten- Brian who offers a gripping poem called Bars on My Soul


Line eleven- Terry McDermott from The Shamgar Report with his poem Checkered Cloth


Line twelve-Sharanya Manivannan adds an international flair to our carnival with her poem Duende (The Gypsy Prayer)



Line thirteen-Soham Das, one of the latest poets to share his talent with Poets Who Blog. His line from I Am Coming Home, and all his work posted online, has its
Rights Reserved as per Creative Commons Attributive-Non Derivative 2007 License Soham Das.





Thank you to all the poets who took part in this week’s carnival and to Billy for running the Ringing of the Bards. All the sentence fragments listed above come from the poems that the poets submitted. They belong to the poet who wrote them. Thank you for letting me use them in this way for our carnival.

* if you believed you submitted to this carnival but was not included email me at IlovetowriteSMP@yahoo.com

Brand New Aspiring Writers are honored to be hosting the Ringing of the Bards this week.


Fallen Words is the work of a yahoo writers group that is filled with novelists and poets who are striving to constantly improve their craft. We offer each other support and guidance. It's great to be able to extend that to a larger community for this week and to spread the word about poetry bloggers.

To submit to the carnival send the following information to IlovetowriteSMP@yahoo.com by July 20th. The carnival post will be up on Saturday.


1. The name and URL of your blog
2. Your screen name
3. The name of your poem
4. The URL to your poem

I might make one poem out all of the submissions, if possible, by taking one line from each poem. So be aware of that when you submit. Of course, your line will be credited to you.

Thanks for taking part in this carnival.

He was going to meet her later that night. The “other” woman. Mia found it strange how, even as she plotted her course of action, she still referred to her as “the other woman” instead of some foul name. Then again, she’d never been one for outright aggression. She was a subtle, quiet type and that didn’t make for rough language.

Jeff didn’t know she knew and neither did the other woman, his project partner, Cassidy. Mia was no stranger to technology, so when she’d come across the private messages, she’d easily been able to make it look like they’d never been read. What had she been doing in his private message box? Looking for the recipe for the meal she cooked tonight, promised to her by a friend to be sent to Jeff. Jeff, the idiot, had forgotten she had his password.

How fortunate for her.

How unfortunate for him.

“Smells delicious, sugar cake!” he called from his study. “My genius cook fiancé is at it again!”

“All for you, my dear,” she called back, smiling pleasantly so the smile could reach her voice and she would sound in a good mood. “Dinner is ready.”

He nearly ran out of his study and sat down at the table. He moved to serve himself and she motioned for him to relax.

“It’s okay, sweetheart. You let me serve. You’ve been working so hard on that project, you deserve a little time to relax.”

“Yes,” he said, mournfully. “I’m afraid it’s going to be another full night for me. I can’t wait until this thing is done.”

I bet, she thought, remembering back to that afternoon when she had called his boss and found out that the project had finally been finished and gone through without a hitch earlier that afternoon.

“It’s been rough,” he said with his mouthful, for some reason eating as fast as he could. “It’s been just one thing after another. A bitch of a project.”

Overcompensating, she thought, pitying him for his lies instead of hating him for them.

“My Mia, this is an excellent…” He blinked and swallowed, putting his hand to his stomach.

“It’s soufflé, darling.”

“Yes, soufflé,” he mumbled as a loud, strange noise came from his stomach. “Peach, I think I might have a sensitivity to your-”

He got up from the chair so fast it clattered back on the floor as he ran to the bathroom and slammed the door behind him.

“Yes,” she said quietly and stood up, “it will be a long night. But not for the reason you thought.”

Poison may be a typical woman’s art, but in that moment, she was happy to be using it. Anyway, poison was only the beginning.

He groaned loudly from the bathroom as she stood outside it. Smiling, she opened the door just enough to roll in the can of air freshener and then closed it again.

So it began. The first step. Revenge best served cold, in a light soufflé.


By Jaime McDougall who posts at Fiction Scribe

twin hues of
green and blue
light and pain
align in the portrait she paints,
a lovely bitter face.

And she wonders....


is it a symptom of madness

to find such beauty swirling

around all that
sadness?


By Sara Pufahl who posts at The Shores of my Dreams