Editor Barbara Harris Leonhard has published my Remedios Varo inspired flash fiction story, “The Past Holds No Reality for Me,” at Masticadores USA. More surreal fun!!!
Tag Archives: Remedios Varo
The Past Holds No Reality for Me at Masticadores USA
Flash Boulevard: Three Stories, Art Inspirations
The famous-for-flash Flash Boulevard has published three of my flash fiction stories. A big thank you to Editor Francine Witte, who is a well-known flash fiction writer.
I’m very excited to have my stories published at Flash Boulevard because they publish the best flash fiction writers, so to think that my stories are keeping company over there is dreamy.
The first two stories are inspired by Remedios Varo stories. The third was written after seeing Frida Kahlo’s “Wounded Deer” painting, although the story is not itself ekphrastic. Instead, it is about living with a variety of illness and health conditions. They are all surreal and yet relate to matters of the human heart. Please feel free to comment at the site. I will close comments here.
The Shadow’s Man at Masticadores USA
Editor Barbara Harris Leonhard has published my Remedios Varo inspired 100-word story The Shadow’s Man at Masticadores USA. Hope you like another fun time in Varo’s surreal world.
Here’s an image of the Varo:
Filed under #amwriting, #writingcommunity, Art and Music, Fiction, Flash Fiction, Literary Journals, Publishing, Writing
Kimos with Kigos: #TankaTuesday
This is the 2nd week of the Heavy Snow (December 7 – 20) season for Colleen Chesebro’s #TankaTuesday challenge based on the 24 Japanese seasons.
The challenge this week is to write three kimos, which are an Israeli form of haiku. Colleen suggested three kigo phrases to use in the three. A kimo has 10, 7, 6 lines and is fairly static. Here are the kigo phrases:
- #1:“buying a new calender” (7 syllables)
- #2:“winter desolation” (6 syllables)
- #3:“trimming the Christmas tree” (6 syllables)
Here are my kimos:
almost at the end of a painful year
buying a new calendar
brings me hope for healing
***
remembering his proposal to her
on the twelfth of December
winter jubilation
***
on my mother’s floor they gather around
to celebrate together
trimming the Christmas tree
The first poem is obvious. This has been a pretty bad year on a global scale.
The second poem is about my daughter and SIL’s engagement several years ago. It was on December 12. Then they married in the courthouse on March 12 during Covid and had a big wedding on February 12 almost two years ago. As Colleen points out in her #tankatuesday post, this is the 12th season. We are also in the 12th month by our calendar. Notice that I turned the kigo “winter desolation” around, making it “winter jubilation.” I wanted to write about daughter’s love of twelve and didn’t want it negative.
The third poem is about my mother’s retirement community.
On Sunday, the journal Roi Fainéant Press and its EIC Tiffany M. Storrs published my new Remedios Varo-inspired tiny story, Mimesis. This one is just as weird as the others, and it does have a cat as an important character. https://www.roifaineantpress.com/post/mimesis-by-luanne-castle?fbclid=IwAR0J2DQ4KmcmG_l1Iw8te2MYMXtAw6ydZfm11MEr68lrlFXVBZIJgVMv0Wk
Remedios Varo Micro Stories Published by The Ekphrastic Review
I am very excited to see five of my Remedios Varo inspired micro stories published at The Ekphrastic Review! A huge thank you to EIC Lorette C. Luzajic for this and more. Each tiny story is accompanied by the art that inspired it. Some of these, like the one last week in Bending Genres, are about poets. I am pretty proud of all my Varo stories and think they are some of my best work. Whether or not they are to your taste is another matter. They tend toward the sarcastic. I hope you do like them, though!
Filed under #amwriting, #writingcommunity, Art and Music, Fiction, Flash Fiction, Literary Journals, Poetry, Publishing, Writing
Micro Story Published by Bending Genres
As I have been pursuing my new passion of microfiction, I have also been having fun with ekphrastic writing, and my favorite artist to work with is the surrealist Remedios Varo. The amazing journal Bending Genres has published a story I wrote based on a Varo painting; it concerns the idea of writing or art muses that are not complacent “nice” creatures. This story also happens to be completely indebted to Sylvia Plath and her poem, “The Disquieting Muses.” My story is called “Disquieting Muses with Pets and Fruit: A Still Life.”
The Varo painting is called “Vegetarian Vampires.” Here is the Plath poem:
| The Disquieting Muses Mother, mother, what illbred aunt Or what disfigured and unsightly Cousin did you so unwisely keep Unasked to my christening, that she Sent these ladies in her stead With heads like darning-eggs to nod And nod and nod at foot and head And at the left side of my crib? Mother, who made to order stories Of Mixie Blackshort the heroic bear, Mother, whose witches always, always, Got baked into gingerbread, I wonder Whether you saw them, whether you said Words to rid me of those three ladies Nodding by night around my bed, Mouthless, eyeless, with stitched bald head. In the hurricane, when father’s twelve Study windows bellied in Like bubbles about to break, you fed My brother and me cookies and Ovaltine And helped the two of us to choir: “Thor is angry: boom boom boom! Thor is angry: we don’t care!” But those ladies broke the panes. When on tiptoe the schoolgirls danced, Blinking flashlights like fireflies And singing the glowworm song, I could Not lift a foot in the twinkle-dress But, heavy-footed, stood aside In the shadow cast by my dismal-headed Godmothers, and you cried and cried: And the shadow stretched, the lights went out. Mother, you sent me to piano lessons And praised my arabesques and trills Although each teacher found my touch Oddly wooden in spite of scales And the hours of practicing, my ear Tone-deaf and yes, unteachable. I learned, I learned, I learned elsewhere, From muses unhired by you, dear mother, I woke one day to see you, mother, Floating above me in bluest air On a green balloon bright with a million Flowers and bluebirds that never were Never, never, found anywhere. But the little planet bobbed away Like a soap-bubble as you called: Come here! And I faced my traveling companions. Day now, night now, at head, side, feet, They stand their vigil in gowns of stone, Faces blank as the day I was born, Their shadows long in the setting sun That never brightens or goes down. And this is the kingdom you bore me to, Mother, mother. But no frown of mine Will betray the company I keep. |
This Plath poem is also an ekphrastic poem, inspired by the Giorgio de Chirico painting, also called “The Disquieting Muses.”
How is that for a chain of art inspiration?
Filed under #amwriting, #writingcommunity, Fiction, Flash Fiction, Literary Journals, Poetry, Publishing, Writing
