A Magazine of Many Arts

Image by Stephen Lippay

Wounded,

I sink into your flowerbed,

succumb to enchanted sleep.

Purple ropes lash all four legs

to the worm-rich ground

and lavender stink invades my dreams.

Grackles laugh. My tail twitches at the sound.

Waking,

I wince at cold needles,

damn the rain that dissolves

my auburn fur and vulpine claws.

Mind and message melting,

I now resolve: these dregs shall poison

your salvia, fell your foxgloves bright and tall.

Lisa Bradley has sold poetry  to GUD, Strange Horizons, and Bull Spec.  You can find more of Stephen Lippay’s photography at  http://ajourneyinimagery.blogspot.com/, or at http://www.flickr.com/photos/slippay/collections/.

Whatever became of Oberon’s Indian boy,
the one Titania loved so much
she bed a donkey rather than give him up,
then, returning to her senses
seemed not to care at all?

There was no particular talent
he had, no special gift or blessing,
beyond quiet charm and boyish
good looks. There was the unfortunate birth,
the luck of being in the right place,
the right time, catching the scout’s eye
when she felt vulnerable, old, uncertain.

But was he, after all the fuss and fret,
the elemental war of poisoned eyes,
only a lark, a fad, the proverbial
flash in the pan, midlife
infatuation with impossible youth,
something we’d inevitably outgrow?

He became the darling of the internet,
Ganymede without the cups,
aging into oblivion.
He gained a few pounds,
got lost in his own celebrity,
never found love or meaning,
finally died the death no poet
fears, alone and overexposed.

The laying of hands over a warm cup
of capuccino won’t deliver us
from what can be read in this morning’s Sun.

For years our dailies failed to penetrate
even a pulpified body of text
with action verbs and barbed, insightful nouns.

I asked if this wasn’t unusual
and my editor said, “Messenger-gods,
like cloistered monks, can always make amends.”

White lies stain my fingers in the obits
with gilt on paper — photographs, captions,
illuminations cut from the whole cloth,

bound for the cheapest of rags or tabloids
to ward off Times more tasteful than our own.

WC Roberts lives in a mobile home up on Bixby Hill, on land that was once the county dump. The only window looks out on a ragged scarecrow standing in a field of straw and dressed in his own discarded clothes. WC dreams of the desert, of finally getting his first television set, and of ravens. Above all, he writes.

EMERGE RAVENOUS

We are dragons again.
For some years we were men
And dressed our skins with suits.
Hats hid our eyes,
Vests were disguise
For heat of heart—and we were tame.
For a while.

We forgot what hats covered
Our sons were smothered
Not knowing their own fire.
Things will burn now
As they burst out,
As we must.
The dragon does not die.

The drum in our chest beats.
A warrior may retreat
But a blaze
Never loses hunger.
These are wild times again
To be more than men,
Leaving our caves to unshackle these wings.

Bethany is a fiber artist who creates yarn themed on fantasy, cartoon
characters, and book covers. This pursuit inspired the first poem she
published. She lives in Oklahoma for the time being, on a marginally
successful homestead with her family. She blogs about books, writing
woes, and Asian TV at hakusa-tegami.livejournal.com.

After the Rapture we were mostly unchanged
except for the souls cut away from our flesh
like excised organs, which left bloody pockets
to probe with mute sorrow
over and over,
not quite believing,
forever unfeeling.

After the Rapture our tongues were the same
yet food lost its savor, we munched like cattle
on whatever we found, (no gourmands left
at the end of the world);
we drooled tears and remembered
the hot tang of pepper,
the apple’s bright crunch.

After the Rapture our eyes still remained
to behold the twilight and ruin, yet colors
bled; the world became a city
beneath gray umbrellas, soaking
and dull, resentful of sunlight
and its remembrance of warmth.

After the Rapture our limbs were retained
except that we moved absent grace—
puppets of meat which fretted and jerked
and drooped at day’s end.
Our feet were struck dumb;
if we moved at all it was to crawl
as though groping through darkness.

After the Rapture our loins still flamed
in aching flesh; yet we grew soft, made love only
to pass the time. Every release affirmed
our jagged isolation; a tragedy of trysting limbs,
each little death a memento
of that brightness carried away.

After the Rapture our gods were exclaimed
by the madmen who arose like mushrooms
after the rain, flagellants and penitents,
crawlers and kneelers and squealers
who cried out in the night
and rent their skin to suffer
the ecstasy of sensation. They didn’t.

After the Rapture our peoples were changed
and came to prefer it that way. Churches all closed
and were left to the bats. We moved slowly
together, masses of flesh
grown rusty as war, nodded to sleep
beneath placid skies; untroubled except
for our satellites falling to earth.

Of course there were warning signs:

slammed doors, the silence at breakfast,
arguments over who should get the paper
or let out the dog. Things moved

or disappeared;
the sleeping pills changed cabinets,
his favorite books left gaps
like skull’s eyes in the shelves, and though

he always had an answer for you, still
still,
you might have seen and known

and turned…where?
What magic brew could draw
poison from a poisoned heart,
could harden his skin against himself?
Whose name would bind him,
what enchanted key could open
the rusted locks behind his eyes?

Fate is a muddy track
that hardens around our footprints.
All its signs are
backwards, written in a glass.
Fate is the worm in the apple,
hidden until the first bite.

And none of this can help you,
nothing can change what your heart
refuses to disbelieve:
that this was not his path.
That all the fault is
yours is
yours is
yours.

Smoke runs down my fingers like morning dew
my ball gown dervish-danced itself to ashes
round my flame-kissed ankles
that long for the axe’s touch
a heat that star-gold shower couldn’t sooth

My lips burn poison with apple kiss
and it is a spark of rose that pricked me into
one thousand years of fiery sleep
and vaporized my sheets with ardent longing

The oven is always hot for those who seek
a trail of crumbs or cinders such as I
and the well is always deep;
it swallows whole my golden fireball

‘What red hair you have!’
and searing heat that changes common desert sand
into quartz glass slippers, with molten tears
I can make your clouded eyes shine bright again

The warm taste of cinnamon wine burns on my tongue
shooting star wings and firefly breath
were my grandmother’s bequest
but the fire from my hands that makes smoke
of all it touches, that alone is mine

He twists the needle in the doll’s neck
a tiny doll that is made from wool
and my dawn bright hair
it fits his hand just perfectly
although the doll’s painted face
looks nothing like mine

My lips release a scream and pleasure
drops from his eyes
like ripe fruit from a tree
his dark copper skin is slick with moisture
and his teeth are shiny white
behind pink lips

Witch-doctor they call him
but never to his face
to his face, they add a ‘Mr.’ to his name
I gave my hair to him willingly
but even so
he tricked it from me
with false softness
and words much finer than those of any actor
on the stages of this world
he gave me the scissors
and I
cut it off myself

The needle is clean
silvery it shines and looks
as if this doll is the first it pierces
but I doubt it
he is not a young man after all
my skirts crumble against the floor

His hand that holds the needle
pulls back
and I groan involuntarily
he rolls the needle between
his thumb and fingers
storm clouds and forbidden pools
are nothing compared to those eyes
that hold me like a promise
his meaty pink tongue
has a life of its own as it slithers
across his lips

Pensively
his eyes leave me,
look down
and with his needle poised
he considers the doll

Hugging herself in cinders
That fell from the fire like stars from the sky
Or snow from wintry clouds
And graying her own hair with these ashes
Who can be surprised that they all forgot
Her real name? Was it Agatha or Gladiel
Or Stella or something else? It can be
Surmised that there was a name once at least
Given by a mother and father but then discarded
Like old shoes, unwanted and of no use
Like dead mice and carved pumpkins in November
No one went looking for it either
There was no jeweled slipper that would
Fit this name and anyway, why bother?
She asks herself, when the hearth’s warmth
Is kind and hides her hair and eyes and skin
Under clinging cinders that have a soft touch
Almost as if they care

Weaving nettle shirts was easy enough –
pulling the stinging threads across the loom
only leaves my skin feeling torn and rough.

The silence: that stings. In my quiet room,
I hunger for words, as my tongue stays trapped.
Pulling the stinging threads across the loom,

I try to forget, to keep myself wrapped
against laughter. My fingers burn. And yet
I hunger for words, as my tongue stays trapped

in this seven year silence, this rough net
of freedom and spells, where I must still hold
against laughter.  My fingers burn. And yet.

I pick up a dark feather, not consoled,
thinking of whispers in a lover’s ear,
of freedom and spells. Where I must still hold

to my rough weavings, where each voiceless year
only leaves my skin feeling torn and rough,
thinking of whispers in a lover’s ear.
Weaving nettle shirts was easy enough.