Welcome to the first-ever issue of The Lit List, a monthly news article that aims to round up all of the lit news you need to know in one quick reading.

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Writers With a Promise 14 by *wyldhoney is out!
It Takes A Village contest over at #LITplease. A two-part contest for those who participated in NaPoWriMo and Script Frenzy. In May, participants must submit a scene or poem for critique and must also critique something else in the contest folder. In June, participants will make revisions to the submissions. Winners for best critiques and best improvements.
#LITplease's 15th Poetry Prompt is up until May 15.
Writing Marathon contest over at #FocusOnLit. Members are asked to submit a portion of their novel every week for 8 weeks starting May 7th. Prizes for winners as well as prizes at random. Any member who submits for 4+ weeks is eligible for a prize.
Transgressions: Vices and Virtues prompts contest over at #lacoterie. Poetry and prose, separate winners for each, all before May 31st, 2012.
Love dA Lit Issue 76 by *IrrevocableFate is out!
The Ladies of Lit Volume XX by `LadyLincoln is out!
Head on over to #ZealZone for a Critique-a-thon on May 5th at 2:00 PM US Central Time! Chatroom: [link]
Ghost Story Contest (Campfire Chills) by =cassildra and *BromVanBrunt is until May 31. Prizes included premium membership, so write your best original ghost story and scare the judges in 2500 words or less!
~akarra's Short Poem Contest focuses on short poems about music in 30 words or less. Deadline is on May 8.
The Winners of the Rose-Shadow Fan Art Contest have been announced by =LadyofGaerdon. Check it out and see if you won!
Daily Literature Deviations for May 4, 2012, are out now.
Read the Word Wars Chat Tour #Expose-Lit Wrap Up by ^thorns  
^3wyl and #ProjectComment interviews ~Ouijaplayer.
Make a Difference #155 is out!
`BornBlitzed is arranging a devMEET for May 5 in New York (Manhattan proper).
You need to read the latest issue of Lit Fortnightly.
The Fan Fiction Contest: Freaky Friday! ends on May 25. Write a short fan fic about you swapping bodies with a character of a fandom of your choosing. The swap lasts 24 hours, maximum of 500-1000 words, entries must be created after April 25.
In case you haven't heard yet: Odyssey into 2012: Engage Wonderment.
The Favorites Project Features #135, #136, and #137 from #LITplease.
devMythologue: is being restructured. Watch out for a new management under *linaket.
#theWrittenRevolution is holding a lit-game marathon on May 9 or 10, depending on where you are in the world. The session will last for five hours here.
#WritersAreArtistsToo announces their Prompt Contest Winners.
#SixWordStories Showcase: April 9th - April 23rd.
Word Wars Chat Tour Schedule
#WritersInk's Weekly Round-Up
Literature Community Fundraiser, an annual event that aims to collect points for redistribution to the Literature Community here on deviantART, is being hosted by `ATrue this year.
30 Writers You Should Discover: Volume IX by `LadyLincoln is out!




Be sure to check the following literature out. These are some of the best we have on the community. Show them love, mates!

WW3 Poem. It's been 15 long and cold years since that day.

The plague and disease still haunt me as if it was yesterday.

The long nights, the pointless fights, and most of all.. my pointless pleas.

While fleas chew my comrades' skin, I say out loud,

"God, did you forget me? Just like how I've forgotten thee?"

The voice does not respond.

Only the noise of AA guns reply to me, silencing my melancholy. Artificial I walked an alleyway
Drenched in blood
Where decaying meat
Swung on hooks.
I witnessed
What they couldn't see:
The cut of the day
Rotting away.
Blindly punters
Barter and shill
In this meat market
Of  'beautiful' flesh:
Shrouded
In synthetic thread.
A nylon existence
Woven in air:
A vain attempt
Of vanities care
To stitch and repair
The fabric fair.
              (The skin )
Ugly or ageing
And dying within,
Hidden beneath
Polyester seams.
However
The taste will out
What truely lies
Deep inside.

Saturday 17th September 2011 Holy Ghost, a Foreign Host Hitler reigns over this town.
He savagely peels each body open like an apple
and each defragmented shell lies
in curled shapes
circumventing their own cores like unfinished fetuses.

Each one is left intact.
The shells are stinking
and soggy fumes waft heavily over Earth like a disease.
Now this is truly evil.
He looks
down upon Desolate Planet Earth
and registers a series of bodies. Something he does not feel is solitude.

One is a feminist.
One is the next Caesar.
And one is the boy king,
Tutankhamen.

(I)

Of the three bodies,

The first is a girl with cherry red lips,
she lives as memories collect. Figures move quickly
pick Crash.                                                    the girls clip-clop in their glitter heels and
                                                  the neon burns away the night.

                                                                 every lost child  smudged shadow torn
                                                                 tights bleary and  dazed  staggering at
                                                                 cross signs and cops running to a fight
                                                                 at the chinese takeaway.

                                                  bodies  pr Shelves for the Soul She dug at places to put things
All shapes and depths of shelves carved
     from wood
     from stone
     from cracks in the earth
She slipped her hands into the folds of cloth
And made tents of muslin
Held up by shadow puppetry and the night sky
Burrowed into the sides of mountains
Catching quartz dust on frantic eyelashes
And shale in the bends of her elbows.
Dove skinless into the caverns beneath subways
Beneath the roots of redwood trees
And felt the rattle of trains
Of explosive life
In her teeth
While her fingertips found bedrock
And fossils
And the heat of a heartbeat
Somewhere in the noisome dark.

She built ho Dear Mom  Dear Mom,

[I know this really isn't a letter like I promised, but you should be used to me giving less then I say I will]

I'm going to feel bad, throwing you into the ocean.

I'm going to have to clench my teeth, close my eyes, and grip my hip [because you're there, forever; in jagged scar tissue with upside down mountain capped M's and a blocky O, you're there, forever.] to keep myself from diving in after you and gathering you back together with the finest cheesecloth, molding you back together and filling you with all the beautiful things you've been drained of. I'll jam sea glass in your eye sockets and replace your weak bird bones wit Enduring Love Remember summer - daffodils unbind,
reflecting salt-and-pepper thunder-skies.
Forget-me-nots intriguingly unwind,
angelic lovebirds offer lullabies.

Maria's autumn freckles scattering
across curvaceous stomach - regular.
Refracted sunlight whispers, faltering
within gold-amber irises – stellar.

Decaying memories evoke disgust.
concern: suspicion, feared unfaithfulness,
imprisoning irrational distrust,
until confession, pleading righteousness.

       Together, lovers' promises unveiled,
       aware affection's constancy prevails. about-face, summons a soft pink current atomizes beneath our crusts,
making out the breathy rapid words in the semidark, mouthing
about sweet scent-ed fingers
the sweaty air of morning and hot grassland.

in a stomachrolling, quickbreathing manner we dream
we are separate, turning out and keeping our eyes
on each other’s orbit-al bones, high as hills;
clammily, fingers make long gasping jumps and skin is sweet
as travelers give birth and poets make love.

being the strongest muscle, our tongues drag across white plains of teeth
pretending they are astronauts, the craters of the moon romance us
as we capture the veined cherry skin behind the lip
we marve A Sonnet for the Ages Now here's a tale of a man named Macbeth
A man who fell as he rose to his goal
Listened to prophecy's laden with death
His mind twisted; thoughts not his to control.

Who killed his friend and king without regret
Playing the fool amongst the fools with fear
Letting noble brothers worry and fret
Crowning himself to start his new career.

A man afraid of those who could contest
His closest friend he did kill with stained men
A new prophecy held him high with zest
Leaving himself open in his own den.

Fighting the man forgotten without dread
Only to end up without his dear head. Placebo I've always hated the color pink. It's something that is as soul deep as the color of my skin or the strange slant of my eyes. Pink has always been and will always be evil, it's been like that for as long as I can remember. It wasn't until that moment, when the froth pitcher slipped from my fingers and clattered against the stone floor, that I realized why.  It was the skirt.

My mother bought it for a special occasion with a woman we'd been visiting at the nursing home. After more than an hour beneath her less-than-gentle ministrations with a hot curling iron and a can of Aquanet, the woman turned us away from the door. It was my f 1000 Paper Cranes I.

We whispered prayers into the corridors
while I spoke into your ribcage,
telling lies to our skeletons
to help you understand.

you said they loved
watching me wax poetic
while I dripped candlelight into your hands.

we watched the dust motes
cover our skin
while I taught you how to fly.
(you were always too afraid to fall
and too afraid to land).

II.

It wasn't lovesongs we sang;
it was half-forgotten hymns.

we never wanted to believe
but you said ghosts exist
without compassion,
and without sins.

I told the doctor
his medication clipped your wings.

III.

I fed you sweet words
tucked in between
candy-canes
and licori Me and My Shadow i.

My shadow slips to silence among the aquatic acacias. Even here, leaves abound, draped over the fuzz-curves of his figure as he soaks up the moonlight. Papa's soft voice turns my gaze to the moon. Remember, Carlos, our shadows are but imprints of the moon. Remember the Eclipse. I shiver and hold onto an acacia branch. I'm careful not to let my shadow near the shoreline where sea meets sand. That's why acacias are aquatic; they drowned their fate with the sea, Papa says. We cannot, we must not let it be our shadow's fate. We are nothing without our shadows. And yet the tide sweeps towards my toes as the moon charioteers across the silver n Drowning in the Rain They're standing out there, on the street, two girls frozen in place, frozen in their bodies, and the people walking by find it kind of hard not to stare.

The one girl's called Eleanor, and her makeup's smeared so badly it looks like she's been crying, and she probably was. Her hair looks like an oil spill clinging to her neck and her eyes like rusty sunk-in nickels and she looks tired, really fucking tired.  The cover up's running, too, and it almost looks pretty, like a tattoo; the scar tissue stretched across her skin.
She's a mess, a beautiful disaster, a train wreck that everyone seems to have no trouble ignoring.

The other clark kent Silver eyeshadow and a blush; smack lips
and sway hips. The nail file's on overtime
and the glitter's out sick. Snap bra strap,
winking at the mirror; stars could get lost
in this cleavage, and these cups could be
flowerpots for a healthy crop of petunias
or baskets for hot air balloons, if I chose.

Tonight I'm juxtaposing crepe with Lycra;
all those stubborn parts sedated, yielding
like cats before the leap. Skirt the colour
and size of a blackbird's wing and knickers
tight enough to make me sing. Peep show
smile; big hairstyle. Just the faintest smell
of wine. And I close the phone booth door

without a single sound:
tonight I don't fear K Boy Many women will write poetry
from you. They will translate
your nose into an apostrophe
your smile to the front side
of a parentheses, the back
to tears only once admitted.

They will filter your father's ashes
into adverbs that define your fingers
quaking along skin and sin
toward fibrous paper. 
 
They will dismiss your flaws
as improperly placed commas
or periods born before their time.
They will inspect, perfect
& infect you with emotions
you never learned to muster.

But none of them will know
you as I did: a boy, bent
beneath the waves of love
and glad for it.

Featured deviants: ~The-Queen-of-Cups ~JenniferIsD3Fective ~handswouldweave *AlloenDreams *Sandstar12 ~KtheCard *AGMeade =methylated-spirit ~julietcaesar `zebrazebrazebra =Kneeling-Glory =angeljunkie *blooperman12 ~Viking63

<sub>The Lit List needs your help! Submit your suggestions for the features section of this article for the next issue (some time before the first week of June should be appropriate) and help your fellow deviants get discovered!



If you're interested in what's hot and what's new in the literature community, the following are the deviants you need to watch. Based on `LadyLincoln's article for #Expose-Lit.</sub>


Literature Community Volunteer Directors




Community Leaders and Former CVs




Critique and General Feedback




Prompt and Group Organizers




Community News and Resources







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