Fantastic Feature Tuesday #20

This is a weekly feature of amazing literature that I come by during my
travels across deviantART. this is only a small sample of a vast amount
of wonderful pieces of literature written by absolutely fantastic
writers. Each deviation was carefully selected from a writer's gallery
based on structure, impact and word usage. I will never feature the
same person twice, so check out these wonderful writers now while you can!




Before sharing with you twenty works of literature (in honor of this being my twentieth feature), I would like introduce to you the talented winners of InspireTheUninspired's recently finished First Kiss Contest and their winning pieces!




First Place

A Kiss by Metarex12



Second Place
BaskingWARNING: Contains sensitive material for those uncomfortable with or unapproving of same sex couples.
Marshmallows. Fluffy treats that bring back so many memories of a time trapped between the pavement of childhood, trying to step off the sidewalk where she stood stagnant, aching for adultdom…Nine years later, her lips still quirk as she reminisces finding the stoplight that inspired—more like forced—her to take that last stride towards the other side of the street.
Tangerine dresses fluttered around her, interspersed with the occasional olive or eggplant flair. She sighed at how unimaginative her classmates were…and at how annoying they were turning out to be. Shuffling steps, screeching at inopportune moments, formed awkward backdrops to salacious music. Teachers and administrators tried, in vain, to separate raunchy students. Students tried, in vain, to perform the horizontal tango both upright and fully clothed. Food tried, in vain, to taste good
Basking by LightOverpowers58



Runner Up
First Kiss ContestHe was just so...cute!  Like a little sheepdog!  His blonde hair fell in his eyes, ruddy cheeks indented with those adorable dimples.  He had such an essence of boyish joy...at least, when we were kids.  That's hardly the case now.
It wasn't safe like it was when we were kids.  It's all...anarchy-y.  It's not safe for me to be alone anymore, not even while I sleep.  So he insists, now a bulky 16 year old, that I sleep near him.  Tonight, since it was cold, he allowed me to lounge against his chest.  I was warmed by his body-heat and intrigued by the gentle rhythm of his chest rising and falling beneath me.  His breathing was like a tender lullaby to me.  He was so deep in sleep that the creases his face had taken on from scowling so much had actually ceased to exist.  His olive skin was so smooth looking, I just wanted to touch it, to play with his stubble, to kiss his jaw and have him whisper little nothings in my ear in his
First Kiss Contest by horrorwriter34




And here are this week's features, which took over an hour to assemble!


let's gosusurrous, the whispers you form
when you become citrus and star
shaped, ladling
those lightyear sheep, fishing for
words that bob and slip
before they sink
in;
   we are, we are
free
you remind me
that we are, we are;
      hawkish and sun-scorched,
diced and divided, pilgrims scurrying through
cement-swollen grocery stores with salmon-bone
shelves plying meat, boxed fruit and rectangle
cheeses and lines built to breathe all the same
way -
   but we are, we
are free, you
remind me
     of cinder-sky puddles and deserts
where the very stones are pilgrims,
the hand raised to fend off lemon light
and so makes a web -
the rope burn in your eyes
does shine so -
so tomorrow, no,
tonight, let's,
let's go It is enough            that I sit here gently
                          rocking, every glass still
         undrunk— these quiet
                               hours, my face
              unzippered, my skin
                             discarded on the floor;
     the sigh of the fridge, the creaks
             :thumb300409633: not so creative‎~
i am a mosquito inhaling hypothermia's scorching breath,
helping with the homicide of my mucus-encrusted enzymes and cells,
cytoplasm seeping into the ice, snowflakes giggling.
>
she undresses me, clips off my wings,
uses them as tangled sheets around our feet
that hallucinated circulating blood, and blood cells that haven't died.
=
my eyes roll with the euphoric embrace,
her saliva whirlpools around my throat,
drops into the cracks of my teeth,
tree sap traps me in the bark,
asclepias was hidden in her mouth.
touching the worldi don't want to touch the world lightly,
in passing. i want to feel her,
want to brush my fingers across her mountains
like specks of braille, want to kiss
the white-tipped waves on her oceans,
want to squeeze her frozen poles and feel
the ice give beneath my fingertips
in a series of shadowy dimples.
i want to whisper to her sweet things
about the blue-green of leaves in a storm
and how clouds form mounds of white floss
between the sun and the sky. i will tell her
that it is lovely and she will quiver
ever so slightly and she will be my sweet child
as i have already been hers. tears laced with poisonthis little lost boy
hears violins
in the
night.
he sings
a song
of anguish;
and his throat
aches with
desire.
his lips
taste like
regret;
and his
bloody smile
has a broken heart
between its
teeth.
his narrow
chest
pulses
with a rhythm
of dread.
this lost little boy
cries
himself
to
sleep. newspaper writerI imagine the bald-headed writer
alive outside of his newspaper print
slugged coffee and untied his neck
tie unfurled about his armpits
and his hair would be unfurled too
and slanted to one side
but being bald-headed it is the hair
he would once have had that has slanted
askew and is in need of a comb
understanding of his sunday mood SunriseYou say my name like a poem you will never write. You look at me like a sunrise you'll never witness because if you stayed to watch, I would be real, instead of being just the promise of something beautiful beneath the horizon. You touch me like a question I can never answer, like words I scratched into your back that you can't quite read, like the only phrase in your vocabulary is "what if." I don't know how to fix this. I don't know how to use tools or how to follow directions. All I have are my two hands and the sheer determination to do something right for once in my life.
I'll duct tape phone lines and life lines and fault lines back together. I'll peel off my nail polish and rub my skin raw, so you can see I'm not a sunrise, I'm just me, don't worry. I'm not. I'll pretend I can hear your heartbeat in your smile and I'll let you think I can handle myself just fine.
You pinned the butterflies in my stomach against the cage of my ribs and tied the corners of my mouth to transcontine
:thumb331124778: it's always cloudyMy body has become a stranger.
Every day, I wake up
and I am meeting it for the first time.
(Yesterday, I was nearly incoherent.
Today, I am stronger.
Tomorrow, the fainting will strike sudden and hard
like a cobra—
… am i poisoning myself?)
I am a spectator to the clenching and un-clenching of my fists.
I am losing track of everything.
Each time, I awake with hazy thoughts and hurting teeth
and my arms feel as if they belong to someone else.
His hands brush my skin,
but I don't know where,
and I don't even really know if it's mine.
I collapse on my bed and I close my dead eyes.
My limbs sink through the sheets to the floor.
When they return, the sun is no longer streaming through the window,
but The Beatles are streaming out of my laptop.
I can't remember turning them on.
It's so hard to tell if things are better or worse
when you can't figure out where you are. halfwayshe lives in an old cottage by the shore, and the waves break against the shallow cliffs and spray foam all over her drying dolls. She makes charms and love-spells and potions, and crafts dolls from ceramic mold to quaint little mannequins; and they come alive under the touch of her blue-stained fingers (blue because she paints their eyes always blue, like the waves and the eyes she should have had)
he keeps a lighthouse in an island off the coast, and he comes and goes to town in a chipped grey boat (the color of her house) and he's happy living alone, savoring the silence and the power he has, over life and death, and light and darkness, and every night he makes the cove alight/adarkened with his lantern, showing the way to the piers.
she's the one that sings the children of the village asleep, because the strong drifts carry her lullabies tucked in the fold of their cloaks, and the fathers and mothers in the village listen entranced to her songs of death and rebirth every night, com SurvivalThe first time
you took off your clothes
in front of me, you slid
the white fabric of your blouse
off your arms and revealed
the pale ladders
of scars.
You never referenced them
directly. You said you were
lost, once. You said you
did things, once, and you
did them because they
helped you survive yourself.
I didn't say anything,
but you took my hand
and pressed it to the
ridged rows of your flesh
and for every line you left
upon yourself and healed,
I found another reason
to call you beautiful.
DREAMshe laced feathers round her wrists,
saturn's spread-out rings;
and stepped into the sky-light,
pretending they were wings. how the vines go limpred is the color of dreams lost in the moonlight nothing, of the desperate songs of broken birds and the sweet screams of madness. it's the lurking color beneath the cloud - cloud of soft, so soft, hopes - she sits upon. her glorious white wings [all the colors of white] beat in the air [destroy the air] and she laughs in the way No One does.
but as she sits and as she laughs, the vines - such rusty vines - are creeping, creeping, creeping. they slither up the sides, the tips of their tendrils twitching [crying], but still she doesn't see [the tears roll down the lovely hills] and her beautiful pale flesh is exposed [and dry up in the dam.] a single red vine ventures to brush against her ankle, and when she feels the icy-slick surface on her fevered skin, she shudders with blessed (so blessed) relief.
the vine wraps tightly about her ankle [such a tight tight grip] and she smiles at the caress. she doesn't can't won't see the spreading flush of red where it bites - bites so hard. the s letter to a suit of armourWe have both been here before,
Paused, stood, and stared before. And
I have to ask- Is it
the light that keeps you so still?
I've watched it pleading,
its yellow yolk weeping
on the shoulders of
impassive you. It finds no features to cling to.
You look seamless. So tell me,
how did you empty? Was
your person plucked away by a sharp beak? Or did
they wither and decay? Are your bones still
inside? Did you creak
shut like an oyster?
What I mean to ask is
where did your details go? Did you trade
them for a legend, quid pro quo?
And last of all, would you
describe yourself as an elephant skulled accident or
something a little more Faustian?
You're a success, that's for sure:
there's a real crowd here to recieve
your address. You know
what they're looking for:
a scattered palm of bones,
a battle scar,
a nameless quiet they can't remember,
a balmy unknown.
They all look for it. They'll
always look for it. They're in your thrall.
But they'll never find that
sense of an ending. No. Not here.
So
:thumb336326171: Identity"White reflects all colors on the light spectrum,"
                                    my teacher once said.
I wondered why it took a scientist to discover
a lesson that history has already taught us.
White doesn't carry home its dead
                                   with
                                   the
                           mirages.he's a beautiful boy dressed as a nightmare, and he manages to lull everyone into his eyes. tendrils of blood trail after his delicate fingers, and he says he can be taken higher than ever. he holds you as gently as possible, and his skin silently burns alongside yours. something about his kisses tastes not quite right, but when he presses his red, red lips harder against yours, you can't quite focus.
he paints mirages of broken legs and collapsed hearts, draws suns of forgotten dreams and fearsome pulsations. because somehow, he doesn't survive, doesn't live through storms of fire, doesn't end up seeing the light of day. he scratches at the smudges on his skin and he whispers to his art, your side has become cold, and sometimes i don't want to be with you anymore.
you were a love of art that was taken too far.






Please don't forget to the journal!
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