Photo Play & Prompt: Fairy Tale and Fantasy

By 32 Comments

Fairy Tale & Fantasy
If we look closely, fairy tale images can be found all around us. Whether inside or out, there are nooks and hollows that glimmer with storybook charm. Here is a creative photographer who creates magical scenes with the ants in his yard. In photography, paying attention to the little things can lead to delightful surprises.

Thanks to everyone who participated in last week’s poetry prompt. We enjoyed Magdalena’s interpretation of a classic Indonesian folktale:

Every now and then
when the moon is so full it glows green
the wind might howl a lullaby
from another atmosphere.

Then you’ll take me by the hand
tell me I’m diligent
show me what to do, and I’ll do it
with grace, humility and well.

You’ll tell me I’m Garlic, the good girl
heady with the pleasure of service.

But mostly the sky is moonless
no breeze moves the air
you’ll know me as Shallots
lazy, sloppy
the ugly sister
I know what I’ve lost.

Instead of cleaning I’ll howl
my dark side out
like a pumpkin full of vipers.

My eyes won’t touch the earth
chin too high to kiss.

I’ll eat the world and spit it out
licking hungry chops
leaving no bones.

—by Magdalena Ball

PHOTO PLAY PROMPT: Find a little corner, nook, or hollow (inside or out) that reminds you of a storybook scene.  Take a photo and share it with us.

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NOTE TO POETS: Looking for your Monday poetry prompt? On Photo Play weeks, it’s right here. Find inspiration from the photo in the post and respond with a poem. Leave your poem in the comment box. We’ll be reading. :)

Photo by Jyrki Salmi. Creative Commons license via Flickr. Post by Heather Eure.

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Sometimes we feature your poems in Every Day Poems, with your permission of course. Thanks for writing with us!

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Comments

  2. Magdalena the way this begins is enchanted… you really hit the mark and captured the fairy tale theme so beautifully all the way through. So much imagery.

    Reply

  3. Laughter In The Forest

    Can you hear them
    In the clearing of the forest?
    Laughter
    And the fluttering
    Of playful wings.
    The thicket flickers
    With sprinkled flecks of gold,
    Pixie powder spread about.
    The tales they tell
    Of whimsical worlds
    Spark imagination,
    A juvenile fascination
    With which to wander from the world’s woes;
    Breathe.
    Be.
    Believe in the fairies,
    Procure the fantasies.
    See the world
    Through their eyes,
    The sparkle of sun kissed dew
    Set upon the forest floor.

    Donna Dissauer Saliba
    Professional Prose

    Reply

  5. I took this photo when I stopped to rest from walking in the Jay B. Starkey Wilderness in Lutz, FL.

    https://www.pinterest.com/pin/323274079478101841/

    What the Shadows Made

    Here in the library of the trees, a lounge,
    a quick plot of grasses—but for some cut teeth
    and a tongue of May Apples, an opening,
    like a surprised mouth in the face of day.

    I am past the thickets of human definition
    that rise from the soft ground around me,
    like pencils, whose green ends pitch and swing
    in the wind as they write what happens next.

    A slender iridescence in the air appears,
    like a hyphen between worlds, watching me
    with limped eyes from a single blade of grass,
    its wings shaped from the forgotten shadows of noon.

    Now it is written in the trees from which it arrived,
    a prince or princess in disguise, a fairy
    on its way to a story meant for bedtime,
    forever small and bright in lovely dreams.

    Reply

  9. Hanseled and Greteled

    I cannot tell you how the story ends
    I only know of the forest, the siblings,
    the bread crumbs, the witch, and the oven.
    I don’t recall a triumphant rescue
    Or daring escape
    They were ripples in a fictional history
    That faded into a river bank.
    Dropping breadcrumbs.
    That I understand.
    Marking trees to let them know
    You came that way,
    You were just there,
    You can catch me if you hurry
    but there will be no reward
    for either of us, I think
    It’s the finding that’s enough.
    Fairy stories were wasted
    on kids like me,
    the ones who knew
    there was no magic in the future,
    no long-lost family
    to make everything better,
    just excuses and lies and leaving.
    There are buried nuances
    and layers of meaning,
    in these stories.
    I know all this,
    but I am busy being lost
    in a new house with new parents,
    and the bread crumbs I left behind
    are sinking into the undergrowth
    sodden and disintegrating
    leaving barely a trace
    and I resign myself
    to lostness and leftness
    in a row home
    on a city street
    where fairies
    are just tales
    and tales
    are just lies.

    Reply

  12. In Plain View

    In the black of morning, before you are awake
    I go searching for the hidden
    Seeking shy and untold stories

    Those we have yet to live
    Or simply hidden from the world

    Tucked between the shadows, behind the musty linen drapes
    I find them trembling, shaking
    Shivering in Earth’s early blue morning light

    Dawn breaks open
    Cracks
    The day wide awake
    Like eggshells over jet black skillet
    Heavy in my hand

    I am both the hunter and the gatherer
    Hunted
    Lost and found

    Words
    Underneath us, buried not yet spoken
    Will be excavated after that last breakfast dish
    Is washed and put away

    I hear a faint, cold whisper
    And smell a moldy mothballed smell, tinged
    In faded shades of every green

    The color of my remembering
    Crayola’s New Spring Green
    All that is
    Yet spoken
    Yet unseen

    And in the end, it all was there
    The hidden and the seen
    On the breakfast table, beside the paper and the tea
    No secrets left to share

    The story of our love, the one of me and you
    Hidden, no longer
    After unraveling love’s sweet mystery
    It lay there, still
    Not hiding, after all
    Hidden, in plain view

    Reply

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