Monthly Archives: March 2015

becomes the spell by David Seaman

29 Sunday Mar 2015

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becomes the spell

These are my eyes awake at midnight
smelling the muddy waters coursing down below
matters waxing sacred as put down to paper
fighting the night wind for my very next breath.
This town is a vagrant that stood its ground too long
every house illuminated with a haunting blue glow
electric eye candy radiating from nailed windows
onto empty streets - dark like caverns
beggarly, with the shadow of lurking violence.
The bile of hoodrat laughter echoes -
at every dark tormented turn
even the hustlers stay in the lamp light
waiting for felonmongers who never show
absent at their wearisome game.
This place is filled with angry Verucas
who cry for trees that are merely weeds
and wouldn’t fuddle from the same glass as me.
Eyes sunken and deaf from the cold wind
grasping desperately to my anguished,
hallowed text.

 

David Seaman is a literary author and poet. His work has been published by Slice Magazine, Foliate Oak Online Literary Magazine, Birmingham Arts Journal, Downstate Story, Bluffs Literary Magazine, and Absinthe Magazine. He is an English major at Illinois Central College.

How to walk past a tree in winter by Shinjini Bhattacharjee

28 Saturday Mar 2015

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How to walk past a tree in winter
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++for Rapunzel, after exile

Seek out the bushes that smell of snapped spoons,
geometric like the hollow of your throat.

Hit the bark 7 ¼ times, till two tired geese
break away from their V and sit on the grains
+++++++++++++++++in the hand of the small girl.

Take note of your epidermis as it withdraws its
forgetfulness stretching taut under dusk and fogged casita
and walks through the skinny braille branches, arms up

Pick up the animal separate on leaf #9
and replace it with the halved wind on leaf #23.
Leaves #27-#48 must be fed to new lacework.

Next, braid a glass blade and lily pad and attach them
to a screech calf. It must float towards the north-west.

Walk four steps on your hair till you see the bottom of the river.

++++++++++++++The girls sit in front of the mirror and pick up enough teeth
+++++++++++++++to pronounce the things returned to them
+++++++++++++They paint their fingernails bright magenta
+++++++++++++and eat artichoke, burying the bracts in their skin.
+++++++++++++Once the light becomes a pinpoint, they begin to talk.

++++++++++++++++++++++++++They talk till their words become woods.

 

Shinjini Bhattacharjee serves as the Editor-in-Chief of Hermeneutic Chaos Literary Journal. A Pushcart Prize nominee, her poems have been published, or are forthcoming in Journal of Compressed Creative Arts, Gone Lawn, Crack the Spine, Small Po[r]tions, elimae, Metazen, Red Paint Hills Poetry, Literary Orphans and elsewhere.

When do we tell them about the apple-tree witch? by John Alwyine-Mosely

27 Friday Mar 2015

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When do we tell them about the apple-tree witch?

The ghosts in the upstairs lav
saw the light-bulb as a cousin
so stayed all year round.

Nan didn’t mind; it was cool
in summer and in winter it
saved on buying a freezer.

Uncle Billy didn’t. ‘If they look
who cares. With my arse
I should be so lucky’.

Besides, they’d left home,
not like those in the garden
lav with its newspaper squares.

Those ghosts made the dark
into fingers that pulled hair
and broke knicker elastic.

At Christmas, holiday
relatives never believed us
until after the Queen’s speech.

 

John Alwyine-Mosley learned to read from Andrew Lang’s Fairy books and ever since he can remember he has known that SF was myths and folklore in technology fancy dress. He is currently working towards his first collection which will be eclectic as the world is too big just to be sad or funny.

Ilona of the Fairy Beauty by Fanni Sütő

22 Sunday Mar 2015

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Ilona of the Fairy Beauty

My name is Ilona,
Ilona: the beauty of the sun and the moon
Soon the sky will be mine as I fly with my sisters.
My sisters, they have the skin of black ravens.
Black ravens are my sisters and I am the thirteenth.
I am the thirteenth, black with ill luck
Although my name is Ilona,
Ilona of the Fairy Beauty.

My name is Ilona,
Ilona: the bride of the sky and the prince
Since the day he saw me in my true skin
My true skin, it is apple-flesh white.
White is my skin and my heart is cold
My heart is cold – it will break soon.
Although my name is Ilona
Ilona of the Thirteen Ravens.

My name is Ilona
Ilona: the victim of the witch and the thief
Grief perched on my heart and I had to fly
I had to flee and desert my love
My love is lost – but he will come soon.
Because my name is Ilona
Ilona, the Everhoping.

 

Fanni Sütő is a 24 year old writer, poet, dreamer who believes in fairy tales even if they are dark, disenchanted and deconstructed. She writes about everything which comes in her way or goes bump in the night. She has been published in Hungary, the US, the UK and Australia.

Circe Sonnet by Robert de Born

21 Saturday Mar 2015

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Circe Sonnet

I found you rising early with the dawn
to wash your hair in dark salt-stranded sea
stepping off my ship one Easter morn -
awoken by your dreams and memory
on seeing your tired drugs consumed by flames
which once, transformative, changed men to beasts
stealing off identity and names
and civic thoughts and memory of feasts
and you awoke, a murmur on your lips
the name remaining like a strange eclipse
above those distant waves which scrape and break
on gnarled old wood of long-departed ships
and still you are pulled in their wake
and still you are pulled in their wake.

 

Robert de Born is a poet and singer who lives in Sheffield with his fiancée, a cat and three trolls. He has performed at events such as the Beacons and Newfound Festivals and his work has been published online and in print.

Pan’s Labyrinth by Lesley Quayle

20 Friday Mar 2015

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Pan’s Labyrinth.

You are Moanna, with the moon on your shoulder.
Find the fig tree and the giant toad beneath,
feed him magic stones to make him vomit up the key.

While the mandrake swoons in milk and blood,
the child-eater waits at his banquet of death,
his eyeballs put out, straining to hear precious hunger,

the small, crisp pop of a grape on the tongue,
imperceptible kiss of saliva. Pale Man folds his eyes
in the sockets of his hands and tries to claim his due.

Find the baby, carry him into the labyrinth, Moanna,
just a few drops from the bright glim of his veins,
and the moon on your shoulder will never wane.

Soon now.

 

Lesley Quayle is a poet, author and folk/blues singer currently living in the wilds of rural Dorset. Her latest collection – Sessions – is published by Indigo Dreams Press.

The Borrower’s Cousins by Ziggy Edwards

18 Wednesday Mar 2015

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The Borrowers’ Cousins

They live far from giants
on carpets of land and water that stretch farther
than they see, under a moody dome.

Trees are tall, but too small to inhabit;
grain fields can be crossed
and harvested. To survive they’ve learned

to make their own buttons, breed tiny chickens.
No one has seen them, and their lives
are not so interesting.

 

 

Ziggy Edwards is the proud owner of a loft bed. Her poems and short stories have appeared in publications such as 5 AM, Confluence, Main Street Rag, Illumen, and Ship of Fools. Her chapbook, Hope’s White Shoes, was published by Pittsburgh Poetry Exchange in 2006.

Stained Glass by Dick Jones

15 Sunday Mar 2015

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Stained Glass

The quality of light: this, a piece
of late evening sky. How darkness
can shine: last of the sun, a first
breath of stars, a waxing moon.

Judas walks out of the small room
while they are still dining.
No one knows but Jesus
and his head is turned away.

But they can’t escape, these
protagonists, caught between
the ruby and green, the dark blue light,
the black bands of lead.

 

 

First published in Ancient Lights by Dick Jones -
http://www.phoeniciapublishing.com/ancient-lights.html

 

Dick Jones has been published in such magazines as Orbis, The Interpreter’s House, Poetry Ireland Review, Qarrtsiluni, Westwords, Mipoesias, Other Poetry, Rattlesnake and Ouroboros Review. In 2010 Dick received a Pushcart nomination for his poem ‘Sea Of Stars’. A collection, Ancient Lights, was published by Phoenicia Publishing in 2012. A translation of Blaise Cendrars’ epic poem ‘La Prose du Transsibérien…’, illustrated by Natalie D’Arbeloff, is due for publication by The Old Stile Press in 2015.

Io Takes Refuge in Upstate New York by Jennifer A. McGowan

14 Saturday Mar 2015

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Io Takes Refuge in Upstate New York

Whiteout.
The sharp bass shock
of a loose shutter. The train whistle
of the eaves. Nesting, a quivering blackbird
in a draughty corner of an attic,
I dream of warmth.

I think this land is as far beyond gods
as a god’s lust is beyond reason.
Certainly the pale people here
take this apocalypse calmly, when at home
priests would sacrifice anything on four legs, maybe even slaves.
(Which I’ve not seen.) When dark fell
I saw no chariot
dragging the dark curtain of the night.

So maybe I’m safe. And yet
some shrill, small part of me
won’t let me sleep. I stare restless
into the storm while outside
the hard, bright snow describes the shape of the wind.

 

Jennifer A. McGowan obtained her PhD from the University of Wales. Despite being certified as disabled at age 16, she has published poetry and prose in many magazines and anthologies on both sides of the Atlantic, including The Rialto and The Connecticut Review. Her chapbooks are available from Finishing Line Press, and her first collection is forthcoming from Indigo Dreams Publishing. Her website can be found at http://www.jenniferamcgowan.com.