Six-Word Stories on Fun and Terror

Pumpkin farm, by Leigh Ward-Smith

At the risk of being dubbed at sixes and sevens, today I will be having some fun with Halloween themes. If you’d like to participate in the contest by SMITH magazine (no relation), you can do their SixContest #38, wherein you comment on their Website and share your six-word Halloween-related stories—funny, silly, melancholy, petrifying, stupefying, or elsewise—by Monday the 27th of October.

Here are a few of mine.

MEDITATIONS ON FUN AND FEAR (AND LOATHING) AT HALLOWEEN

Pumpkin ball, by Leigh Ward-Smith

Dragon-souled moon looked through me.

Four: tiny tiger. Forty: colossal mouse.

Fear: Realizing they don’t come back.

Green skin still won’t scrape off.

Sadly, Mrs. B always gave apples.

It’s scary to be somebody else.

Hell is oneself. In saecula saeculorum.

Humanity: Spectral particles forced to coalesce.

“Haunted” houses much better than mine.

Neighborhood haunted house: “spaghetti is guts.”

Ugh, Uncle ate entire candy bag.

Halloween: The world’s dentists thank you.

 

 

 

 

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Six-Word Stories: On School

“How small a part of time they share/That are so wondrous sweet and fair!” from “Go, Lovely Rose,” Edmund Waller. (1606–1687)

 

For me, school is indeed out forever. But philosophically speaking, not so much, because  the world is a schoolroom if I let it be.

Nonetheless, teacher strikes and other issues notwithstanding, here in the States most children are back in school. So I’ve been ruminating on and writing about school days: mine and those of the kidlets.

I also noticed that the good people of SMITH magazine and Six Words are tripping down the halls of recollection. Through Friday, 12 September, they are harvesting your memories of academic successes and failures in their back-to-school Six Contest.

Perhaps you’ll consider taking part over there.

Here are some of mine. (And here are some not school-related sixers from Dr. Joe in Dublin. A tip of my writerly cap to this scientist writer!)

Six-word stories on back-to-school (and all things school, really):

Nimbus of curls hovers, then evaporates.

Son rising: Doe-eyed daredevil outclimbs himself.

Trust me, I’m no good at math.

Shyness 101: Feigned illness, skipped graduation.

Kindling at home, school; youth combusts.

Hot teacher motivated my good grades.

Sprinting from self, running on teams.

Abandon hope: Moving during high school.

The words shall set you free.

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And now for what some would consider very dark humour (this is the ‘cleaner’ of the two memorable “Rowan Atkinson Live” sketches, usually called “Fatal Beatings”)! Hope you enjoy . . .

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Summer on a Stick: Six-Word Recipes

I’m trying to be more of a “green thumb.” I hope the cantaloupe will make it — wish me luck!

For many, summer spins around a loose center of salivary satisfactions. That’s no less true for me.

Enter the Six-Word Memoirs/SMITH magazine Six Contest #32.This contest seeks your six-word summertime recipes or reminiscences. For those in wintertime, perhaps you can channel favorite warm-weather fare.

Here are some of mine (not submitted for the contest; you do that on SMITH‘s aforementioned Web page), broadly about recipes, food, and summertime rituals:

 Dew-drizzled raspberries: all hands grasp.

Homemade cantaloupe freeze pops: Di-vine decoction.

Crushed mint: sweet violence stains fingertips.

Thymus serpyllum — feral herb gentling weeds.

Tender perennial, savagely decapitated: ubiquitous tomato.

Garden sprinkler after a nine-mile run.

Runningwoman, water douses head, H20 halo.