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Summer 2025 Discussion

1. What’s outside the window?

2. Canoeing

3. Newsletter

4. Family dinner

5. Summer thunderstorm

[nosebleedclub]

Summer 2025 Discussion

1. What’s outside the window?

2. Canoeing

3. Newsletter

4. Family dinner

5. Summer thunderstorm

[nosebleedclub]

Summer 2025 Discussion

1. What’s outside the window?

2. Canoeing

3. Newsletter

4. Family dinner

5. Summer thunderstorm

[nosebleedclub]

Happy First Day of Summer!

[nosebleedclub]

May Prompts

1. Late

2. Clammy

3. Bird watching

4. Institute

5. Old doll

6. Irreconcilable

7. Purloin

8. Late bloomer

9. Swordplay

10. Turtle dove

11. Radicalize

12. Personable

13. Cheating

14. Stepbrother

15. Western region

16. Forms

17. Unicorn blood

18. Undergrowth

19. Dalmatian

20. Lepidopterist

21. Pacify

22. Andromeda

23. Magnifying glass

24. Lawn chair

25. Tennis skirt

26. Obedient

27. Reverend

28. Titmouse

29. Mead

30. Nordic

31. Olive tree

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@nosebleedclub Poetry Month Prompt 25

Isolated building

The walls have weathered away quite a lot

Exposing the bricky foundations to the unforgiving climate

Vines now cover the cracks in the windows

As a thin ray of morning light glistens through

The remnants echo a silence that haunts the neighborhood

Equally barren and eerily still

Occasional gusts of wind wuther through the empty rooms

The floors and ceilings of which whisper

Stories from the memories of past lives

The structure - once a prized possession of maybe many

Now weeps in isolation, amidst rock piles and chipped stones

As it rots away in a damp, mossy grave...

Wren~

[nosebleedclub]

@nosebleedclub 25: isolated building

consider this:

you're stuck in a parasocial relationship with yourself, where you imagine each of your actions provide some kind of impact on your character, but in reality, you're terribly disconnected to such a point that

there is a council of big and scary dogs inside, that circled and circled you until they formed a table,

and when they sit at it, they bark:

to such a point that,

"you're deemed irrelevant."

they doubt you, and it's not a fight you can win.

the walls of the fabled building, taped in threats, stand taller than you. so stupid. so awfully isolated!,

no one can come in, so no one'll leave. a marvel! come sit at my tea party,

the tea tastes a little like concrete

[nosebleedclub]

What story do you want to tell?

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@nosebleedclub Poetry Month Prompt 23

Sewing

The skin got pierced and the finger bled

The shoulders went stiff and ached

Eyes strained and pained

Complaints left my lips as my hands trembled with exhaustion

You sat by me on the couch

Patience gently pouring out and into

Something you were busy creating

I watched intently but never understood

The reason behind your silent dedication

As if it was your tattered soul

That time tore apart and strewed about

And you were sewing those pieces back together

Much time has passed and nowadays

I feel like I know you better

Despite the lack of your existence

I feel you smile a little more with every stitch I sew...

Wren~

[nosebleedclub]

She alone survived the tornado that devoured her childhood home. Final girl. Who clawed through wood and metal like a rat. She alone survived and it was twenty years ago but it might as well have been last week. She registers her husband's stifled panic as federal agents swarm across the lawn. She almost laughs in his face. This is nothing! This is a game compared to that. She places an arm on her husband's shoulder and gives him a look that says, you are acting like an embarrassment, get it together. Because isn't it pathetic that the son of a prominent former U.S. senator, and himself a career politician working for the Commission of... (such and such)..., can fold under pressure so easily? It's an investigation, nothing's been decided yet, and more importantly to her it is not the tornado that almost ended everything. She thinks: they will recover. Virginia-Maryland-Washington society will chitter chatter for a few weeks but she and her husband and the kids will make it out of this triumphantly. Admirably. She watches as men in suits enter through the front door (yes, they have a search warrant), and track mud onto the historic wooden floors. Idiots, she thinks. They are using my husband as a scapegoat and to win the public's esteem, but it won't work. Don't they know what it took for me to be standing here? Plus, we're not alone!

[nosebleedclub]

--prompts from @nosebleedclub and @schuylerpeck

An octopus nestles behind my back; tickles the insides of my breasts, and laughs. It's the middle of the night, but I don't find myself yearning for ouzo or plum sake. I ache for black sand.

I hold a crucifix near my chest, but I had forgotten to believe in what my family has relied on. As tentacles play with my chin and find their way around my waist, I want to let go of the cross, bless the waters of the darkest night, but my hands are clammy and cold.

Flesh doesn't taste good without due reason; I'm floating only through the grace of the season.

A light emerges from the surface; but the moon is waning, and I'm enraptured. Hope is an anchor piercing through my back; but all I feel is baby octopi finding their way across my feet and snuggling my ankles.

Is there a god of the night, or one amongst the stars? I'm dropping into ecstasy, my ears only feeling the pressure popping, but I'm still trying to find the light, fading, and glimmering.

[nosebleedclub]

Writing for around an hour and a half, ending at 9:30pm eastern! Please feel free to join, whether it be writing or reading!

Does anyone want to have a writing session tonight (Eastern time)?

[nosebleedclub]

22. octopus

when he actually shows up at taco bell, you have no one to blame but yourself. it's like the shock of meeting a stranger who turns out to be your father—familiar features etched on a person who once was a gothic shadow. the identity you've frankensteined together—through his lack of punctuation and silences between impulsive double texts—is a coping mechanism. far away and tucked within the false fortress of the internet, you worked the magic of maladaptive daydreaming. it didn't matter that he was only available during standard business hours, when he was at the office, away from his wife and kids. and you kind of always knew you weren't the only plaything on the roster.

but then he's confirming a time and a place, and your YES! ends with too many smiley-face emojis, and you think what a mistake it was to surrender so much hard-won power for the sake of temporary validation. in the flesh, he's not as tall as you were led to believe, and he knicked himself on the chin shaving, and his plastic leather jacket crackles. you look up at him and want to force yourself to feel all the pathetic, lustful desperation triggered by every new notification chime. he picks up on your uncertainty and tries to smile, but you know he's now judging you for not wearing makeup. you look at him and remember that after a male and female octupus fuck, the male dies.

@nosebleedclub

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What story do you want to tell?

[nosebleedclub]

Does anyone want to have a writing session tonight (Eastern time)?

[nosebleedclub]

--prompt from @nosebleedclub (2 April)

My fingers bleed as I imagine what death might be, through the hands of the guilty. i ponder on myself as I write out the world's wrongs, do I reflect in this mirror with a pretentious gaze?

Poisoned berries color my work with unslightly red; I signed myself a deal to provide color, but how does it come through the tongue?

I only know the language of thorns, threaded through vintage lace, peeking out to face the sunrise, naked. --Elda Mengisto

[nosebleedclub]

19. lamentations/dirge

girlhood as a dirge. girlhood as the private rehearsal for a public lamentation. girlhood as the moment when your eighth-grade crush kisses you underneath a gum-encrusted bleacher, then says he's surprised that your "nappy" hair is so soft. just this one moment of your shame and his oblivious cruelty, slowed and stretched and played on a loop, bathed in Sofia Coppola lighting. girlhood as a strange body you don't remember having or even wanting, a body worth its weight in tart promise. girlhood that teaches you which kind of violence can be survived, and what kind of pain is best for forming bonds and nursing obsessions. girlhood as forgetting your lines in someone else's fantasy. girlhood as failed sainthood and a common symptom of a collective delusion. girlhood as the meteoric rise and reductive demise of a hollywood ingenue known for playing an oscar-winning role meant for a woman at least a decade older.

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