Vikki C.
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vikkicwrites.bsky.social
Vikki C.
@vikkicwrites.bsky.social
2.7K followers 1.2K following 1.2K posts
IN THE BLUEPRINT OF HER IRIS (IceFloe Press) | WHERE SANDS RUN FINEST| THE ART OF GLASS HOUSES | Bridport Prize 2025 Shortlist | Pushcart, BOTN, Orison BSL nominee | Contributing Editor: The Winged Moon | Guest Ed.: IceFloe Press

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vikkicwrites.bsky.social
Delighted to receive my contributor copy of Bacopa Literary Review 2025 featuring the winners & contributors selected from their 2025 contest window.

Lovely to see my poem 'Luminaries' in print alongside accomplished international works. Huge thanks to the editors & congratulations to all 🩵
Bacopa Literary Review 2025, published by Writers Alliance of Gainesville. Luminaries It's about therapy only the valley-bone knows. Hard to locate without a guide to where I was last seen. The chest sunken with disorder, stripped of calm and birch. Here’s where vultures commune without the grief of human attraction. I’d choose a plateau to graze with endangered beasts, but this slant is made for us, with its rain and alien descent. Mother says the loves that matter blossom when the sky turns. As you transition from singular, to touching the woman in the mirror. Like hinterlands beg the air to yellow, to carry us as wheat, as gust – agent and change. Night is a complex prescription. Sometimes you glisk the stones, discern white pills from the foaming sea mouth. Sometimes you kiss me in the middle of my ex-life, the field platonic. In the end, what the fires spared, stayed equally radiant. What’s a body to surrender? The chance of oversleeping as his ribcage glows? Tonight, crosswinds plead fragrant and oleander seeps into the blood. For the first time since I quit losing, neon leads to your door – a glint of where the key should be. It’s easy being adored in exile. But how orphic to say we are finally refuged? Able to take our shoes off without ghosting. To lose it all, and still find evidence – porchlit, riverworn. Dawn, low in his rough hands, his body oiled for a banquet. In its own dull sheen, the weathervane unhinged in some accidental blessing. My eyes, another animal’s eyes – giving away nothing for free. and still find evidence – porchlit, riverworn. Dawn, low in his rough hands, his body oiled for a banquet. In its own dull sheen, the weathervane unhinged in some accidental blessing. My eyes, another animal's eyes – giving away nothing for free.
January 15, 2026 at 1:47 PM
vikkicwrites.bsky.social
A new imagistic re-imagining of a fairytale narrative with at least 2 invented words. Here, perhaps in a modern context – but still old at heart. (I think you can guess the tale).

'Not All Light Be Equal'

Thank you for this wonderful theme @blackboughpoetry.bsky.social 🤍

#writingcommunity #TTT
Not All Light Be Equal Domestically,  it’s poor-light, the cause of such poor-sight, an ash-riddled name among dirty occupations.  When the devils fan flames, I wish for a god-light to sweat right through the heart of it. Blue carriage & a brave-neon horse that takes that bloody bit whole in its mouth—all the way to where we waltz—                      the good-light & I. Indulge in the body’s clean break—till curfew when I must alight the good-light, a tall tale grown thin. You see, I leave, & something else is left —but whose glass belonging?  Tomorrow, they’ll come searching for the one —watch this world try it on for size.                                                         Vikki C.
January 13, 2026 at 1:05 PM
vikkicwrites.bsky.social
Felt like a good time to post my heritage poem UNCEDED with beautiful, nuanced art by @rfredekenter.bsky.social—from IN THE BLUEPRINT OF HER IRIS, a hybrid collaboration by Vikki C. & Robert Frede Kenter.

We hope it reaches more readers in 2026. Available at @icefloepress.bsky.social🔥(Link below)
Artwork by Robert Frede Kenter which accompanies the poem UNCEDED by Vikki C. from IN THE BLUEPRINT OF HER IRIS (Ice Floe Press). UNCEDED Vikki C. Where the dirt winds around as piles of fine silk. A backstory left to unravel in a temple corner, she returns small, covered in incense—vanishing into my mother’s body. No speech or injury, the point of re-entry—painless. Say there was a needle once, and a man who’s long gone—forefather of some voyage like this one. The accent, foreign. As in the inflection of olive or ochre—soft, easily eroded by another. To be a body in constant motion—a war framed through a stranger’s eyes. Anyone with a language worth saving— a tongue that slips between borders of wound and country. Because to be sewn or sown sounds too similar to a foreigner. The same silk now pulled taut into screens. A divide for future-watching. We are all the audience—something like hope or a virgin land projected against dazzling light. Flat-bellied, wet—unceded.
January 8, 2026 at 1:05 PM
vikkicwrites.bsky.social
For #smallpoemsunday and @tomsnarsky.bsky.social
a new poem for 2026 – 'Even after grace'.

Thank you so much for reading 🩶

#poetrycommunity #WritingCommunity
Even after grace I’ll still worry as the bread leavens. Reprieve, but less teeth for the banquet. Who doesn’t want the wine of dissolution? Its feathers lately blue on the roof as we thrum through sheets of rain? For music at the wings to acquit the body’s dull current. What strikes twice on faces like this? Despite a cross, the chapel the realtor trades in broad daylight. Its one jaded window where you vacate me like a wave.                                                             Vikki C.
January 4, 2026 at 1:50 PM
vikkicwrites.bsky.social
Always loved this triptych of NYC cameos at @cablestreet-litmag.bsky.social. Happy New Year, Robert and @icefloepress.bsky.social. To poetics, art and hybridity into 2026 and beyond ✨️
January 2, 2026 at 3:27 AM
vikkicwrites.bsky.social
May 2026 bring more calm and stability — the physical and mental space to reflect, create, commune, grow, realise, and journey on.

Thank you for the art, books and music 🩶

'Washington Square, New Year's Eve' — published in the Sunday Mornings at the River 2026 Poetry Diary.

#poetrycommunity
Washington Square, New Year's Eve Vikki C. No nightingale, just a cold-pressed peace —its long syllable held through the startled language of crowds. I heard it once in the pastels of an afterlife —some snow-song glittering the giant fir, imported from across the border. A centrepiece of how close we were. Countries, war & missed love aside, we blizzarded soft against its emerald fingers. Luminous lunate baubling the west bough, tipping it towards the lake’s dark meltwater. Its gold sun counterpart hung elsewhere —invisible for a brief lifetime.  And you, skirting the roaming light where tree tip thins to a different miracle. Counting down, you turn my eyes up, to the coda.  My body reaching higher now — for the clearing in your arms.
December 31, 2025 at 5:56 PM
vikkicwrites.bsky.social
"The failure of beauty
is looking back for it.
Taking soft turns at loss,
the scarf covering the mouth."

— 'Carousel'

A new poem on "nostalgia" written for this week's TTT. Part of my WIP.

@blackboughpoetry.bsky.social #writingcommunity #poetrycommunity
Carousel All light being equal. we have a few good rides, mistaking fairgrounds for nostalgia. Even before the coin drops, I am that coward, gripping a mane that’s only real in childhood, —meaning nothing can save me now. Mothers become daughters, & so on, wishing for hard candy & a hero. Each slow-spin, a departure from the blue in the painting. It’s all cyclic, you say— the flower passing us by till we forget to alight. The failure of beauty is looking back for it. Taking soft turns at loss, the scarf covering the mouth. Seeing every face, loved in slow-motion, —never mine. Vikki C.
December 30, 2025 at 4:30 PM
vikkicwrites.bsky.social
'A collaboration of light' – Vikki C. (December 2025).

@photohour.bsky.social
#visualart #photography #artistcommunity #poetrycommunity #WritingCommunity
December 29, 2025 at 7:35 PM
vikkicwrites.bsky.social
Visited the National Gallery – Alexandros Soutsos Museum and saw the permanent collection with exquisite works from post-Byzantine era to contemporary.

Then, a stop at Cafe Veneti..coffee whilst deliberating poetry (and the next move) over a beautiful chessboard ♟️

#Athens #art #artistcommunity
December 28, 2025 at 4:23 AM
vikkicwrites.bsky.social
Triptych from Meteora.

Surreal, breathtaking, iconic. 600m above sea-level and site of six active monasteries, the earliest dating back to the 14th century. Each houses ornate frescoes and artefacts.

The 5 hour journey was worth it 📷

@photohour.bsky.social
#Meteora #Greece #writingcommunity
December 27, 2025 at 5:30 AM
vikkicwrites.bsky.social
Merry Christmas and happy holidays to poets, artists and art lovers around the globe. May it be a season of health and creativity. Returning to the spirit of home— wherever you find home.. 🕯✨️

Right 📷 taken near Corinth last night.

#Athens #travel #Xmas #WritingCommunity @photohour.bsky.social
December 25, 2025 at 12:48 PM
vikkicwrites.bsky.social
Today's ruined beauties: The Temple of Apollo at Ancient Corinth, The Acrocorinth, and Palamidi Castle. The last two involved challenging climbs on perilous stony terrain—but totally worth the views 🖤 📷

#Corinth #Greece #ruins #castles #WritingCommunity #poetrycommunity @photohour.bsky.social
December 24, 2025 at 2:44 PM
vikkicwrites.bsky.social
Thank you for another wondrous year of TTT creativity @blackboughpoetry.bsky.social and @matthewmcsmith.bsky.social Here are 3 of my "best" TTT contributions from 2025.

Much light to all poets and readers for the holidays. 🕯

To many more seasons of magic ✨️

#writingcommunity #poetry #imagist
INTUITION Sometimes you lie down, pretend you haven’t forgotten how to bind your wrists to the bloodshot grasses. Crawl only in the mind— gypsum limbs, belly thick with nectar. I’m told, when still, I have Father’s kind eyes, & Mother’s harpoon tongue. O but that blue crossing between heart & lips—streaks of—sure, we’re loved, wholly. These lashes—bent oriental fans shielding from touch, or plight rarely. What I recall mostly happened elsewhere; mouth stuffed with figs sudden flood, a fire keening under the fingernails. Lesson one— when the beast arrives I’m not worth it when I lie it snows—or I’ve no place to go. Vikki C. Ars Poetica: Whitby Abbey, late autumn I begin with what I cannot lose. Despite stained-glass, & injury. Despite repetition. We sail into the next ruin, anxious of losing meaning —keep the haloed figure within eye-range. Time elongates—cities constrict, & rain mimics every device in one fell swoop. The guests already know the exits. Archways of sumac, red with refusal —another crack at devotion. Most gaze skyward. I genuflect over century-wet marble, see a swallow angling the world. Others close their eyes—& aim. Vikki C. I held on once, because you showed me the yellow scaffold leftover-lore braiding lumen-high bees before turning stone broke against the pantheon's teeth still I—waste I—refuse the nature of ruin, contaminated by a shine worth jading. Vikki C.
December 23, 2025 at 1:42 PM
vikkicwrites.bsky.social
Climbed Mount Lycabettus, the summit being the highest point in Athens. Mythologically, Lycabettus is said to have been created by Athena when she dropped a limestone mountain she'd been carrying for the construction of the Acropolis.

Stunning panorama & an amazing strawberry milkshake.

#Athens
December 23, 2025 at 12:35 PM
vikkicwrites.bsky.social
Goodbye Santorini 🩶

Was ambitious enough to drive around the island — pastoral allure, Aegean splendour, black sand beaches, ornate Byzantine churches, somber dusks, and many beautiful cats.

Sound on 🔈

Music: The Dormant Miracle by Vikki C. 🎹

#WritingCommunity #Greece #Santorini #Aegean
December 22, 2025 at 7:25 PM
vikkicwrites.bsky.social
Honoured to have a new poem out with the cosmic and beautiful @astrolabe.ooo!

Huge thank you to editors Joel, Jae and Astrid for including my poem 'Elegy for a Grown World' in the Winter 2025 materialisation 'The Clepsydra' alongside so many luminous works 🌌

www.astrolabe.ooo/c-elegy-for-...
Elegy for a Grown World Materialized by Vikki C. 21/12/2025. Of course there were others. Juvenile planets we fantasised, laid on our bare backs, dust streaming from our eyes—long before the train ride to meet each other again. To witness that trick of light along the river. The game we played of loving straightforwardly, past the silos, where smog equaled nostalgia and red skies triggered a girlhood alarm. Past fishless reservoirs and heronless fog, years later—the keening of icecaps against our knees. A fugue that blues the ear, straining to hear the whale’s song—fainter now from starvation. Still, we follow the river, seeking what we had to leave—the dark lake with two lilies at its navel, the summer of grapefruit the size of volleyballs, we halved—worms crawling out like drunken guests. Now, the knife just opens up two thick silences—white at the rind of its creased mouth. Who is holding out our halves to us these days? Is this why the river runs away? How I love you in reverse—before taxes and tallness, before towers, and bricks like loose teeth, raining on a parade. There’s a district now where the sky powders against the nape. A postmemory—the dear friend held in exile. The voice dredged of nectar, as butterflies loiter in a cold spell, confused between fall and the next life. Are these instructions for an emergency? Where to gather and crouch so the hawk-drone won’t mistake our pleasure for the animal kind—windwhipped on soft, bent limbs? It’s a game—you unname me, and we coax each other into the flow, which is sometimes a trick of old light that arrives because you are here, heaping sugar into your anxious brew, reading the news about another great flood. The waterline rising along the river that hasn’t yet vanished in your eyes. It is there, just harder now. A field of snow or lace in a fragile Pacific bowl, tilted towards my lap—and you, saying how it was always true and crystalline. Never just a game of languid bodies, sinking into too-soft depths.
December 21, 2025 at 6:53 PM
vikkicwrites.bsky.social
Beautiful otherworldly frame to today's breathtaking, windswept 10km hike along the Santorini caldera rim. The water cratar lake tideless and still, bearing the appearance of deep, blue silk.

Full sequence on IG 📷

@photohour.bsky.social #photography #caldera #poetrycommunity #artistcommunity
December 20, 2025 at 6:50 PM
vikkicwrites.bsky.social
Beautiful Santorini 💙

#Greece #ocean #photography @photohour.bsky.social #poetrycommunity #artistcommunity
December 19, 2025 at 3:49 PM
vikkicwrites.bsky.social
Figured out the tram thanks to the help of some very kind local folk, so took it all the way to Glyfada Beach. Beautiful winter beach day – sunny, serene crystal waters and delicate foliage. A place for healing...and signs of a new poem on the horizon...🌅

#Athens #beach @photohour.bsky.social
December 18, 2025 at 3:33 PM
vikkicwrites.bsky.social
Delighted and honoured to have two new poems out in Same Faces Collective's SHAPE/SHIFT issue.

Huge thank you to EIC Deanna Whitlow and team for including my work 🙏

Sharing "Re-visitation". Check out "Libertarian" at the link:

samefacescollective.com/post/re-visita…

(Alt text included below)
Poetry, Vikki C. Re-visitation Last time, the gates were unhinged. The rose-tinted rain a myth. Like October’s uneven sun. The river is full, but emptied with ecstasy at a whim. Reeds waiting for the wind to make the first note again. An instrument you hold to my lips. Letting me breathe into it—like that time I was over the limit— and you bailed me out. Now you listen with hindsight. But the peeled riverbed and its wishbones invite a deeper sound. Their orchestra practising all this while we were boisterous, slinging back champagne in the garden. No one serves up breeze-slapped romances now. Wherever we left our bodies, a colony of spiders has spun a coded complex. The fridge’s glaring neon renders the hallway into a laser zone. We creep small and low to avoid triggering God’s alarm. Or disturbing the bowl of still-life on the counter. They’ll auction this estate soon, but we’ll pay the price—no matter how high. Cost of materials is rising. Cost of immaterialism too. No roof, just bread and water—rising. The patiently leavened sky.
December 16, 2025 at 4:04 PM
vikkicwrites.bsky.social
Some beauty needs no artist statement—especially that of long admired gods.

#poetrycommunity #photography #artistscommumity #ancientruins #Athens #Greece #gods #temples #rosegold #lastlight
December 15, 2025 at 7:55 PM
vikkicwrites.bsky.social
Delighted that Bacopa Literary Review is out, featuring the winners & those selected for publication from the international Bacopa Literary Contest 2025.

Honoured my poem 'Luminaries' was chosen for inclusion under the Free Verse Poetry category. Huge thanks to the editors & congrats all round 🔥
December 14, 2025 at 8:07 AM
vikkicwrites.bsky.social
The TTT prompt was to write a winter themed landscape poem avoiding a list of 40 forbidden, often overused "winter" words.

A great challenge. Here is 'As mercury falls'. Thank you @matthewmcsmith.bsky.social & @blackboughpoetry.bsky.social for making us step outside the borders.

#poetrycommunity
As mercury falls we start to believe in eternity, a radiance from beneath, the field colourless, but not free of what matters. Like a miracle-pill crushed between the verbs fall & spring as if healing were straightforward. For miles, Mother’s sheets laid out, almost clean of the filth we left —knuckles scraping it to far borders where lilacs & kin once volleyed the sun. Where sometimes, my deer-body leaps taking leave without too much notice. Vikki C.
December 9, 2025 at 3:46 PM
vikkicwrites.bsky.social
The @blackboughpoetry.bsky.social Christmas-Winter anthology volume 6 arrived! Honoured to have 2 poems included with stunning work by poets worldwide & beautiful illustrations by Emma Bissonnet. Many thanks to EIC @matthewmcsmith.bsky.social ✨️

Order yours today 🎁

www.blackboughpoetry.com/news
The Black Bough Poetry Christmas-Winter anthology 2025, volume 6. Advent Snow falling in continuous tense as if nothing has strayed. And what to do but begin again, decorating this palace for you. Unpacking the tangled fable, choiring all the ways to give and give. The field off-white, its halflight a train carrying would-be joy towards silence. Who would have witnessed the blue horses candling the steps of my body? Or December’s thin bell we pretend is not the toll. Our feet invisible under white —but our prints everywhere on Earth. Vikki C.
December 7, 2025 at 9:14 AM
vikkicwrites.bsky.social
Revisiting this stunning poem –
“Postdiluvian” by Emma Bolden @emmabolden.bsky.social in @versedaily.bsky.social – originally published in Asheville Poetry Review 🤍

#poetrycommunity #WritingCommunity
Today's poem is by Emma Bolden Postdiluvian A flinch of sky shattered into an iridescence. A chill electric as a bad tooth shocked by ice. Above: the color of marlin. We could neither keep walking nor yield. & far past the fields the beasts we'd called wild marched to the forest's edge & stood, a collage of star glint gumming up their teeth. Once there'd been a story that grew a garden, that orcharded, innocent, & we turned the tangles of its vines into the snake we blamed for our propensity to abandon our weakest to the leaves. See we had lived for so long in gleam. See in the distance the gray sound of a bird without the gray bird. See we knew no longer the difference between disaster and decency. Above: the sky fluoresced & we were sore afraid of how every circle we made became a wheel. We were the ones, furred & unmercied, who stood outside of the garden & learned the world we lost was not ours to begin with. See. It was ourselves we feared so nakedly.
December 5, 2025 at 10:11 AM