cdnsurfer's profile

AGE: 46
LOC: Canada
GEN: Male
LAST LOGIN: August 31

Well, I’ve been back at it for a couple of years now, after a very long hiatus (15-16 years). Thirty two poems and seven short stories (not including reprints) published in 29 different venues since I started submitting work to editors 2 1/2 years ago, including the New York Quarterly. I read for CBC Radio during National Poetry Month (April, 2008). I also received my first Pushcart nomination for 2009. Many, many people to thank for the help – here and elsewhere. I am now working on a novel, a novelette, and a whole bunch of shorter works. I am paying back the system, doing what I do best – help out other writers.

This is one of my many “etch-a-sketches”.

Stuff is posted here to workshop, so feel free to rip it apart. Since I’m he…

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Items

Version 2

10 Reviews 9 Comments

Her Eyes Her eyes hang like plums. New iris stems, green, the blue sepal folds, falling. I want to dice them with knives, plunge blades to the metal core where molten iron forms magnets, lodestone moon, birthing inconstant love without crowning, salamander words, speaking in tongues. Salt fleck seeds suckled. The storm on my lip, bursts open brings eyes to bloom. “Look!” See me from within beneath the blue fur coat that holds everything. But her eyes hang from vines accuse ...

Poetry - Overall

Version 1

6 Reviews 5 Comments

Her Eyes Her eyes hang like ruby tomatoes sweet, caustic fruit dripping red from fertile earth. I want to dice them with knives, plunge blades to the metal core where molten iron forms magnets like lodestone moon, bearing inconstant as love or inexact as science. I scatter salt flecks like seeds. The storm on my lips brings them to bloom. “Look!” See me from within beneath the blue fur coat that holds everything. But her eyes hang from vines accuse the passing clouds of false witn...

Poetry - Overall

Version 2

6 Reviews 2 Comments

Guernica Herman writes a letter from an open-air café in the Basque town that bears her name. Her parents, Jim and Carol, were both art students when they met at a Picasso exhibition in New York City in 1981. Two years later, they christened baby Gee in a small Lutheran chapel down on Dundas Street; witnessed by a small crowd of friends and family, and the usual assortment of well-wishers willing to suffer a cold, wet Lake Ontario squall in November. There, under the glory of God, and ...

Flash Fiction - Overall

Version 1

8 Reviews 7 Comments

A grey rainbow trout fell from the sky, the day John left the office for the last time. It was a healthy five pounder who’d spent the better part of three years in nearby Windy Lake, avoiding the cheap plastic lures fishermen put out on Sundays, only to be whisked up this morning by a water spout. After shattering a fortieth floor window of the Providence Insurance Building, the fish tumbled down the sloped glass incline, glancing off the umbrella of a hot dog vendor, before flopping at...

Novel Treatments - Overall

Version 3

6 Reviews 3 Comments

I nuzzle small, metered lines, gnaw slippered poetic feet my head laid low to the Persian rug where skirt folds end in hardwood, engrained with year after year of failure. Her voice full with love and disappointment she runs fingers along the back of my ears, soothing me until I sleep from the unbearable weight of words. At night we dream the same things: bones, dug up or buried while she twists her bed sheets, cries for freedom I desire no escape from my mistress, bound and tied to strings o...

Poetry - Overall

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Reviews

by Unnaturalyeti

It’s a tricky business working with rhyme. Here you have no discernible pattern. Since you’re working with 13 lines, I might suggest adopting something like a rondel or roundel. Go one more line and you’re into sonnet length. I guess what I’m saying is, be sure of your form before your rhyme. The magic of rhyming verse is in the form. Alternatively, you could go with a simple couplet form, either abab or aabb. Your metre changes up but mostly you seem to work with an anapaestic foot, i.e., L1...

by squarehopper

I’m going to stick with plot points here J. Personally, I liked the first version better. The reason? The first version focused more on the important elements economically, while this one seems to wander across a wider number of plot points more sparsely. I also thought the blind God creating his healer was clever in a Borgesian way, and that is lost in this version. Instead of a sense of circularity, we have an open-ended last sentence. Also, the parallel between God/Jesus and Cruz/Jesse is ...

by Ceridwen

When I looked at this piece, I thought I might spy a bit of John Donne, as the title, and there is a bit of it there. I wonder if you could stretch your theme further – focusing on what profundity there is in death’s pride. For in Donne, the challenge is to death, for Man shall overcome even death in eternal life. A very Christian idea. You could reverse it through an inversion to challenge the Christian mythos. The challenge is not death, but Death’s pride. The idea in Donne is that Death lo...

by Elandra

Locked

by squarehopper

Ok, a few comments on this one. I generally like what you’re doing here. The first paragraph could be more descriptive and by that I mean it could establish more plot and character. The 2nd and 3rd sentences could be merged. What’s important here? It is that he becomes “expert” enough to create the perfect child. The rich and famous and celebrated and wealthy are minor issues, but are hammered twice. Focus on the importance of his expertise instead. The second paragraph emphasizes Jessie’s pe...

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