Tag Archives: forests

Baba Yaga by Ashley Parker Owens

28 Wednesday Oct 2015

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Baba Yaga

Baba Yaga is the devil’s grandmother,
suggesting she was a mother once.
She flies through the air
in a mortar & pestle,
& sweeps away footsteps
with a silver birch broom.

Her hut deep in the forest
stands on giant chicken legs,
with no windows,
sometimes not even a door.

The fence is made of human bones with skulls on top,
& visitors are granted entrance with the magical phrase:

Turn your back to the forest
your front to me

Baba Yaga is not good,
but is not entirely evil.
She is not a good mixer or easy-going.
She kidnaps children & threatens to eat them,
& provides wrong information to strangers
unlucky enough to lose their way.

Baba Yaga knows something about women:
they are desperate to learn the secret
of turning wrinkles smooth.
She knows a recipe,
but to ask her aid requires
preparation & purity of spirit
& a dollop of basic politeness.

She ages one year per question,
& is reluctant to help.
Aging reverses with a blend
of tea steeped with blue roses,
& the chant:

Turn your back to the forest
your front to me

 

(An earlier version of this poem was posted on Accents Publishing Blog as part of #lexpomo. http://www.accents-publishing.com/blog/2015/06/15/baba-yaga)

Ashley Parker Owens lives in the hills of Kentucky, where the gnomes are. She has lived in San Francisco in an ashram, and in Chicago where she helped with the Second Underground Press Conference and was the creator and editor of Global Mail. After the successful publication of Gnome Harvest by Double Dragon Publishing, Ashley is writing the next novels in the Gnome Stories Series. She has an MFA in Creative Writing at Eastern Kentucky University, and an MFA from Rutgers University in Visual Arts.

A Flickering Light by Nadia Gerassimenko

07 Sunday Jun 2015

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A flickering light

Through a frightful forest I walked
Where branches left marks,
Crows wounded hearts,
Path led to doom.

Obscurity hid away my fate
And shot dark creatures my way.
No longer I felt the courage to go on.

A flickering light emerged
And chased the darkness away.
It grasped my hand and led the way
And told me to be brave.
To be brave.
To be brave.

“Life is never a simple duty.
You must see ugliness before beauty.
Never underestimate your strength.
And never fear of your road’s length.
Keep hope and faith near as you move,
For they will make your journey smooth.
And forget not that I’m beside you.
Your hand in mine, we’ll make it through.”

 

(from the author’s collection Moonchild Dreams)

Nadia Gerassimenko has been writing poetry since she was 14 years old. Only at 25 did she dare to self-publish her first collection of poems called Moonchild Dreams. Her poetry chapbook compiles poems from the period 2004 to 2015 about hope and wonderment, loss and sorrow, love and imitation, and enlightenment and wisdom. Nadia currently lives in New Jersey with her beloved husband and Sheldon, their sweet ragdoll.

The Green Man by Allen Ashley

30 Saturday May 2015

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The Green Man

You’ve seen him on pub signs, of course:
a country-dwelling, jovial chap.
Today he’s been rendered safe:
follow him across the road.
He’s the smiling bearded face on church walls
but we’ve known him longer than we’ve known
           the Church
           or Christianity
or other mystery cults from the Middle East.
He’s there in jack o’ lanterns, jack of shadows,
Pan and Robin of Locksley;
every heroic British man-jack;

Follow him across the river and into the trees;
don’t look back.

We draw him in clothing – ragged trousers.
hand-sewn jerkin – but really we
know he would most likely frolic
unclothed
with nymphs, dryads and Wiccan priestesses
coyly described as “sky clad”.

See him grinning at our mortal concerns.
He is laughing at those who equate him
with the Horned One, The Beast, Old Nick.
Too many in these days think in black and white
and he is green. Fertile, virile, abundant…
Forgotten
almost
but due for rebirth.

Allen Ashley’s latest book (as editor) is “Sensorama: Stories of the Senses” (Eibonvale Press, 2015). He recently guest-edited the online magazine “Sein und Werden”. He is the judge for the British Fantasy Society Short Story Competition. He is also the co-author of “Dreaming Spheres: Poems of the Solar System” with Sarah Doyle (PS Publishing, 2014).

The Woodman’s Tale by Mary Gilonne

11 Wednesday Mar 2015

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The Woodman’s Tale

If it’s night he should know it,
but her hair glows, leafed with the falling
and forests are always possibilities
of other things.

If light fails, follow darkness
in my eyes she says, unfolds the map
engraved on her, marks him with a cross
and draws him in.

She scatters words like pebbles
stepping stones of sound, tastes
of mossy glades, ripe apples, nourishment
he’d never known.

Hard to feel the morning loss
to imagine dawn anchored eastwards
the vessel of her sailed, flaming masts of trees,
an aftertaste of sawdust, knots.

 

Mary Gilonne is a free lance translator ,originally from Devon but has been living in France near Aix en Provence for many years. She has been short listed twice for the Bridport prize, published in online magazines, and considers poetry to be as essential as food and wine.

Silver Birch by John C. Nash

16 Friday Jan 2015

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John C. Nash finally settled down as a self-employed bookbinder and writer in Northampton, England. His poetry has been published in various magazines including Antiphon, Cake, The Delinquent, Verse Kraken and Lighthouse . He co-edited the anthology Making Contact for Ravenshead Press and is currently working on a collaborative project with the photographer Sam Webster.