My Writing · Writing Resources and Activities

Journal Juice

TeaShell Michele

What would you do if, when you fed it kale, celery, and mint, your juice extractor churned out tomato juice? I don’t have a juice extractor, but this is the image that came to mind so I have to go with it.

Really, what would you do?

I’d be blown away and a tad intimidated by how independent my juice extractor is. I would talk to it (I talk to everything) and I’d get excited and experiment with my magical appliance.

What will it do with cucumber, celery, and parsley? Give me persimmon juice?

Now, this illustrates beeeauuutifully what happens when I lift phrases from my journal entries, mix them up (put the phrases on slips of paper and shuffle the slips – learnt this trick at the late Anne Schuster’s creative writing workshops) and get my surprise Journal Juice.

How do phrases from a piece of apple prose + a piece of pear prose + a piece of mango prose = orange juice? It’s because you (and I) can do magic.

Try it.

Below are four poems I ‘juiced’ just the other day. The first poem was voted to the top by my youngest son.

Journal Juice poems…

Blue Pickle, a poem by Michele Damstra. Sand, warm and reassuring grains of what has always been, what continues to be. Overhead, the blue expanse. I communicate in blue, about being blue, to blue itself. I'm in a pickle, but I will not sit in vinegar, on a shelf.
Blue Pickle by Michele Damstra
Vapor, a poem by Michele Damstra. Buried alive spade after spade. Warmed by the sun. In my cup meringue vapor sloshing around, bright cherry. My body bewitched by wordless messages, a delicate, swaying, swinging gait. Not part of anything. Not anything.
Vapor by Michele Damstra
Grief, a poem by Michele Damstra. A barrage of butterflies had to do repairs, create a tender, new pattern and pulse. I fly free, become my future joy. Grief unboxed me. Living in a coffin lined with silken illusions? Tear away from the pin that impales: comforting fantasies and hopeless hope. Their exit is your entrance. Grief unboxes you.
Grief by Michele Damstra
Cycle, a poem by Michele Damstra. In a sealed chamber - a womb moist-pink, the color of love, of carnal pleasure - cushioned by a wall of membranous softness, in a soft, trusting body, a delicate thinness tears and bleeds. A pink pearl, born of blood and pain, of a tear, of tears, a growing roundness, a little moon on a velvet tissue sky, lodges in the dark perfection in a sealed chamber.
Cycle by Michele Damstra

Your turn. Give it a go. See what surprising, juicy, magical Journal Juice is extracted from your random writing.

Mpwha + toodle-oo = I love you.

xxx ❤ TeaShell Michele

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