Denizen [words on wednesdays]

by | 12 Comments

The word of the week is:

Denizen

Definition of denizen

noun

  1. an inhabitant; resident.
  2. a person who regularly frequents a place; habitué: the denizens of a local bar.
  3. British . an alien admitted to residence and to certain rights of citizenship in a country.
  4. anything adapted to a new place, condition, etc., as an animal or plant not indigenous to a place butsuccessfully naturalized.
Denizens

Photo by j thorn explains it all

Here is the word in Aunt Jennifer’s Tigers, a poem by Adrienne Rich:

Aunt Jennifer’s tigers prance across a screen,
Bright topaz denizens of a world of green.
They do not fear the men beneath the tree;
They pace in sleek chivalric certainty.

Aunt Jennifer’s fingers fluttering through her wool
Find even the ivory needle hard to pull.
The massive weight of uncle’s wedding band
Sits heavily upon Aunt Jennifer’s hand.

When aunt is dead, her terrified hand will lie
Still ringed with ordeals she was mastered by.
The tigers in the panel that she made
Will go on prancing, proud and unafraid.

PRACTICE

Write for five minutes using denizen as often as possible

Also, extra credit if you use the word of the week in your daily practice!

My Practice

What a time to remember odd words! Stuck on an island in the middle of nowhere, with no way back to the mainland. The few crofters cottages that had looked so pretty in the daylight now had an ominous glint. Robinsoe Crusoe’s adventures first popped into my flattened mind, well he had sunshine and Friday, me I had an enormous headache from too much cider and wizz.

Jamie left me here, can’t quite believe that. Well we were finished that much is evident. How could I trust him if he’d leave me here, here of all places.

It was freezing. The light summer clothes were no match for the gale penetrating every pore. The denizens of the island long gone to their graves in the churchyard on the cliff. But knowing there was no one here, did not stop the cogs in my brain whirring at each creak or groan.

Miss Bishop our English teacher talked a lot about denizens, she was Indian and had citizenship of three countries; India, Burma and Britain, she called it Great Britain, but it wasn’t so great anymore. No jobs, no hope. She though, was fascinated by the English language and loved to roll her z’s and r’s enunciating each syllable so precisely. She did not like slang or sloppy talk. I wonder what she would make of this situation. She’d probably write a poem, stylising the wind and sea with the long dead denizens. That’s what she would do.

Me, I’ll hunker down in this corner, wait for true sobriety, mmm there’s a thought. I wonder if I could find the Great in Britain if I wasn’t always off my head or coming down. Maybe I’ll sit with that for a while, I might even write a poem, Miss Bishop always said I had po-ten-tial.

← The Danger of Beige Prose, Purple Prose’s Less Colorful Twin
How to Get In Touch With Your Characters (Especially When You Have Writer’s Block) →
About the Author

Suzie Gallagher

Suzie is scatty writer from Ireland trying to write her first novel, entitled The Only Temperance Bar in Ireland. She also writes worship songs, poems & short stories. You can find her at her blog and on Facebook.

  • http://www.buckleadership.wordpress.com/ Justin Buck

    (I thought it was so interesting that the word has two conflicting definitions!)

    University. The word had a magical feel to it about the middle of July. The teardrops on my graduation gown had long dried since May, the illegal intoxication of June had worn off, and I can now remember the exhilaration that came with July. But today it was August. And I was terrified.

    All but cowering as I set slinking along the edge of the quad, avoiding trudging passers-by, I couldn’t help but feel like a denizen among denizens.

  • A.K. Andrew

    I heard the sound of the boat pull into the harbor and I wondered what the biting denizens of Port Mason were going to make of a stranger. Never a good call in my experience, but then strangers are often threatening to an introvert as well as crabby villagers. I have to stand back and let them make the first move in a social situation. Always been like this apparently. Especially as a child when my fellow tortured souls were let go at the metal gates, denizens of whatever torture Sister Maria was likely to dole out.

  • Steve Stretton

    “Denizen,” what a funny word she thought. Why would someone deny zen? Or should that be deni zen? The denizens of the deep had a familiar ring to it. As though she could see them there, all gathered around, all talking in some strange language, all knowing each other’s names. Denizens, all inhabiting some murky ocean depth, the squid and the octopus chumming up with the whale and the angler fish. A submarine gathering of old friends, all denizens of their own peculiar fishy world.

    • http://twitter.com/pootlesuzie Suzie Gallagher

      Steve good job

    • Babbitt

      I liked the flow of your piece. This sentence is stuck in mind – “Denizens, all inhabiting some murky ocean depth, the squid and the octopus chumming up with the whale and the angler fish.”

  • Babbitt

    He rested his elbows on his knees and stared into the fire
    and kept his eyes averted from the denizens of the past that surrounded him in
    the darkness. The shadowy denizens, the
    mutilated denizens, the vengeful denizens slinked inches closer to him. He felt the denizen’s fierce cold breath
    prickle the nape of his neck and a shiver skittered down his back. He threw another stick on the fire and
    wondered how long he could hold the flame with his eyes without burning them
    through.

    The point of an index finger traveled from the crown of his
    head down over his forehead. His eyes
    snapped shut. The denizen’s icy touch
    splintered into shards of frozen memory and death, and he collapsed to the
    earth in utter pain and gasped for breath.
    They will not let me go this time, he thought and the fire’s flame
    dissipated from view; he lost consciousness.

    • http://twitter.com/pootlesuzie Suzie Gallagher

      Babbitt, great stuff love the line vengeful denizens slinked inches closer to him

  • Jeff Ellis

    When I was in my early twenties, I was one of seven devoted denizens of our local coffee shop, the Quilted Tavern. There was Cathy, who was a workaholic and never strayed too far from her americano. On hot days, she would sometimes get it iced. Jason was thirty-four and Lacy was thirty-five – they were lovers, of each other and of iced mochas, regardless of the weather. Mark, Luke, and Ryan were teenagers and infected with the do-nothing disease so commonly found in mid-sized towns caught between good country living and the exciting city life. They all got plain black coffee, the cheapest thing after good ol’ fashion H2O. And then there was me: twenty-something, recently divorced, and perpetually angry. I spent most of my time at the Quilted Tavern writing a novel that would one day amount to exactly nothing.

    Cathy was the first to go. She likely found some job in the city and without so much as a goodbye, or even a hello, she disappeared from the Tavern forever. Having never spoken so much as a passing word to her, I still find myself wondering where it is she wound up, or who or what it was that saved her from Penton, NE.

    Mark dropped out of high school and fell in with a bad crowd. He showed up at the Tavern from time to time, drunk or worse, until the management finally kicked him out for good. Luke told me not long after that Mark had died in a car accident. I was sad to hear it, but not surprised. I had lost similar friends to similar deaths.

    After Mark died, Ryan and Luke both graduated with some honor or another. Ryan joined a branch of the military, the Marines I think, got a haircut and shipped out. He showed up from time to time, getting more and more jacked up on whatever it is we’re feeding our soldiers these days. The last time I saw him he was a foot taller than me and his shoulders dwarfed mine.

    Luke met a girl, ran off to the city, and only came back on occasion to see his parents. When he would visit us at the Tavern, he looked happy, but his wife was unusually quiet and shy. When Luke talked, she seemed almost afraid of him, like the louder her got, the more likely he was to lash out at her. I decided I didn’t really like Luke after that.

    Jason and Lucy had a kid, bought a house in the neighborhood near my parents’ and were still visiting the Tavern every day, right up until the day I left. They named their daughter Briar Rose after Sleeping Beauty. It was Lucy’s favorite movie growing up. She had blue eyes like her father and she laughed tiny chimes that made everyone smile. They’re still there from time to time, when I come back to visit.

    I bled all of my anger into my novel, slowly transforming my quiet rage at my young, cheating, wife into sorrow and eventually forgiveness. Right around the time that I finished my first draft, I landed a job at an accounting firm in the city. I often hope I’ll run into Cathy on the street, or maybe Ryan, or Jason and Lucy, but I never do. My novel is still sitting in a drawer inside my desk at home and occasionally I consider finishing it, but I don’t know. It wouldn’t be the same working on it anywhere, but at the Quilted Tavern.

    • http://twitter.com/pootlesuzie Suzie Gallagher

      sublime

      • Jeff Ellis

        Haha, thanks Suzie! That’s also the name of one of my favorite bands ;)

  • Parsinegar

    - ‘Sorry mate, what was your name again?’ They asked me with an evident frown on their faces.
    - ‘Denzen’ I said, feeling the unkind, heavy eyes on my brownish skin.

    - ‘Oh, Denizen’, said one of them in the front row of the almost twenty-person army, ‘come over here and join us for a drink’, with a scarlet beer bottle in his left hand which seemed quite muscular.

    I could see there’s no empathy in those words. Hell intoxicated, they all were waiting for me to just approach them a few yards and then they make a football out of me. Turning my neck around, I saw myself in mouth of the metro station. I can’t remember how I flew downstairs to catch the first train, as they were staggering behind me, pushing through the throng like a colony of worms slipping into their subterranean nests. I was even twice afraid to see the pigs inside the station. I had hardly ever trusted cops as trustworthy creatures whom you can turn to, even when a pack of denizen dogs chase you on street to bite your sense of self, although you never meant to touch their privacy.
    In all of a sudden I changed my mind and decided to stop running. Swiftly enough, I put my passport and money in my back pocket and buttoned it, and put my big gold ring on my right hand middle finger, getting ready to have them face the music they were requesting for.
    As soon as they saw me preparing for a fight, winded down and made their way back out of the station.

    • http://twitter.com/pootlesuzie Suzie Gallagher

      Hell intoxicated what a phrase Parsinegar! Good job

Copyright © 2013 · The Write Practice