Lunar New Year: Year of the Wood Snake

PoetryFlash FictionMicro EssayThemed Call
Written By Creative Colloquy | Connecting Creatives

Winners from our themed submissions call!

 

2025 is the Year of the Wood Snake and in honor of Monkeyshine season and the Chinese New Year CC opened a themed call for submissions! In Chinese astrology, the Year of the Wood Snake is a time for growth, stability, and creativity. It's also a time for personal development and navigating challenges.

We're encouraged the community to submit a short story, poem or essay revolving around these symbolic themes (or centered on the Wood Snake itself).

Pieces selected for performance:

  • I am the Tree Snake by Sasha Victor

  • Wasteland by Christina Slack

  • Magic by Julie Baldock

  • And Dust You Shall Eat by Ronen Perry

I am the Tree Snake


by Sasha Victor

I am the tree snake
I coil and coil, calcifying life,
Every ring a testament to survival,
Time circled and circled,
Death disavowed, pushed aside for one more year.

I refuse to concede to the cold winds,
To the birds pecking and pecking, tormenting me.
Storms scream in my face, the sharp rains cut my skin,
but the snake inside continues to coil.

I am an alchemist.
I transform the cold water into an invigorating tonic.

The earth presses against my scales.
The rocks pelt me,
Knock against my sides.
But they will not bury me.

I coil and coil out of the earth,
Grinding boulders with my teeth,
Swallowing the deepest darkness.
My tongue scours for crystalline nutrients to sustain me.

I encircle death.
I squeeze out new growth from its sour eyes.

I shed my bark,
Drop my wind-scathed skin,
Give the pestilence something to devour.
I expand, and I breathe newness.

I uncoil my spine upwards to the sky,
My evergreen jaw spread open,
Cyan veins pulsing with life,
The holiest whites budding from my fangs.

Celestial cycles whisper through the night:
Grow, grow, grow.
I brace for the heat of another year.
I absorb what life pours onto me, and I grow.


Sasha Victor enjoys spending his free time leaning precariously into the abyss to recover any glimmers of life he can glean in order to tell the world about the wonders he’s found. You can see his collection of words and treasures for yourself by searching for @sashaandsebald

Wasteland

by Christina Slack

They didn’t tell me the water was drying up
So when my well ran empty
I drank from the swamp instead

They insisted the trees were still standing tall
So when I saw the barren land
I went back inside

The food was rotten, but they assured me it was fresh
So when the scent of death crept in;
I held my breath

I heard the insults, the attacks, the hatred
I saw the signs
Recognized the violence

The neighbors were crying;
Mothers begging for their children
Priests for mercy

Lights flashing
Sirens screaming
Doors slammed shut

Our daughters were diminished;
Footprints faded away
Voices hummed to whispers

Their dignity dead

The funeral song had just begun
When they celebrated in the streets

I felt the tension
The apprehension

The aching of my heart
The assault on my soul

But they convinced me there was no danger
No cause for alarm

My fear misplaced

Don’t be irrational
Unreasonable
Extreme

This would lead us to Greatness, they said
Not goodness
Greatness

A worthy compromise, they said

So I silenced my heart
Ignored the warning of my soul
And allowed it all to blend into the background of my life

Until no one had to tell me anymore

For this was the Will of God
The prosperity of our Nation
The solution to my suffering

The Golden Age

So I closed my eyes and covered my ears.

Christina Slack hails from Puyallup and has lived in Washington state her entire life. She has no website, blog, insta handle, or the like to direct you to. Instead, she has several unfinished poems in various journals scattered throughout her home. This poem is the first to be brought to completion and thus the first attempt at publication

And Dust You Shall Eat

by Ronen Perry

Drawn about by hounding wind,
The dust will darn the heath again.
Shifty flicks the felon tongue,
The asp a slip across the stone
Stays the staff in onyx lith
And coiled warm in waning light
Stirs amid the silo'd life,
The dusty layers, crust of Earth,
Dull and croned and cast amuck
Will make again the strength of Me,
Charged and spent from snake belly,
And dazed about the window pane,
The window's dust will mingle light,
And drawn about by hounding wind,
Will down to darn the heath again.

Ronen Perry (he/him/his) is a 23 year old lifelong resident of Bremerton Washington, adjacent to the Puget Sound Naval Shipyard. Since boyhood, Ronen maintained an interest in reading and writing stories. During Sophomore and Senior years at Central Kitsap High School, class of 2020, Ronen wrote for the Cougar Chronicle, Central Kitsap's quarterly newspaper. His writing was primarily journalistic until his Senior Year, where exposure to Walt Whitman began an interest in writing poetry. Though he grew out of his imitation Whitman phase, Ronen hopes to retain the soul of Whitman's work, the chord that verves in all creation and mankind, one unifying voice of appeal and praise. If Ronen has one hope for his work, it is to have captured this voice in the written word, and, like Whitman proclaimed, to have left a Verse worthy of 'the powerful play'. Beyond writing, Ronen is a carpenter in his Fourth year. He plans to someday branch into cabinet making, using traditional joinery methods and tools. He currently resides with his Father and is the house's sole handyman. Someday, he will move to Montana and see what all the fuss is about.

Magic

by Julie Baldock

A few years ago
I stopped at an abandoned building
with a hand painted marker on fabric sign that said
Psychic Inside.
She said she didn’t want my money.
People come in because they need something.
She could sense I was seeking change
and she was right,
but even that didn’t surprise me because
of course only someone
in need
would risk it
after everything we had gone through
for a moment of possible knowing.
I wondered if
this would be how I died
or maybe how I started to live.
She said I had power
and talent
and everything was coming.
Earlier,
I made a wrong turn and found treasures
down an alley.
Art and Leonard Cohen seemed to be everywhere all of a sudden.
Maybe all turns were right,
pre-ordained.

We are whatever we tell ourselves
is the hard truth-
that I have no one to blame for my limitations
but myself-
situations of distress can be
explained away as merely a lack of imagination.
But maybe that’s not true either.
I’m at the stage where I know a lot and
one of those things
is that I know nothing still.

Julie Baldock (she/ her) is a poet who lives in Tacoma. When not writing, she can be found actively engaged with her community or her cat, Izzy the Princess of Flufftown. Her third book, Chutzpah, is currently in layout and she also has 2 other books of poetry: Things You aren’t Sorry For and A Woman of a Certain Age, both in their 3rd printing. She also is the founder and facilitator of the community writing collective Tacoma Writes.

 
 

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