A Magazine of Many Arts

Robert Borski

Hidden or unhid,
a shadow playing peekaboo

in the reflecting
glass of our twinship,

he who is both kin
and chemical love child

floats in the clear aspic
of my lymph,

though at the moment
he is less preserved than confined.

I will always hesitate
to call him brother, but know

that even when we pretend
otherwise,

the two of us are both still there
in the amnion of blood

and violence that jointly unites us
in playing card fashion

as jailer and inmate, the Jack
of Murderous Wrath.

My biggest fear, however:
that fratricide will only liberate

the one of us who wields the scalpel
most intent on carving

himself out of the other, but is
too wholly absorbed with the process

to ever notice the resulting scars
never seem to heal,

no matter how much either my brother
or I caress them.

Sandi Leibowitz

<
Night and the forest has come into the kitchen with darkness tangled in its hair.
Angela Carter

Even his eyes have been eaten.
I remember him the way he used to be,
foreign presence entering our cottage
changing everything,
the Bear since swallowed by the prince.
 
I didn’t want his brother,
naïve duke in silver hose
and adequate broad shoulders.
Be happy, Rose said, beaming,
her wish also command;
we can stay together forever
just as Mama said.
 
Don’t think I covet my sister’s husband,
the prince with his amiable grin
full of blunt white teeth.
But Bear, oh Bear, what I would give
to feel those ivory fangs
slide slick against my shoulders.
 
Rose says his fur was brown
but it was the black of loam
to which arboreal dynasties deeded
their thousands of leaves,
black as the night that waited
beyond our fire-lit hearth,
breathing just outside the cottage door.
He wore the secret scent of the woods,
whiff of danger and decay,
savagery of owl,
sacrifice of dove.
 
Bear’s eyes gleamed more gold
than flame’s play on brass kettle
or bee darting through the dark paths of the hive,
the subtle soul alive.
How could I guess it was not
imprisoned prince
but Bear himself I glimpsed there?
 
Oh Bear, you have purged the wild within you,
the greenwood gone as if you’d torched the brush.
 
That’s not even a ghost of you,
the man cloaked in ermine pelt
who rules these marble halls
beside Red Rose, his placid queen.
 
Cultivated gardens surround us,
and fields tended by peasants
who scrape and smile when we ride through,
barricaded within our tidy carriage.
The woods are miles away.
 
Now if I would taste the night,
I have only my own heart to visit.

Adele Gardner

You bend, my angel, pensive, over graves.
He loved me--loved us both in different lives.
You have her hair, he said.  His eyes sought yours,
Hoping your eyes would follow--not blind stone.
You saw him.  Cameras caught you, quite alone,
The two of you, communion--in one frame--
Translucent arms to soften vicious blame.
You coexist on paper--muted muse,
Scarred poet--grafted through enlarger’s views
Into one entity, four arms, one heart
That speaks to one who's stood too long apart.
 
Your stone bouquet droops over a bronze vase--
A home now to dry dirt and spider lace.
Close in the breast of hollow ribs below
Lie crumpled poems written long ago
For her, then bundled up for me to save
Like gifts whose worth might shield him from your grave--
Despite the fact that he had left us both--
Cast off, trod under, then chalked up to growth--
So much for lover's promise, marriage oath.
How could I know that stone had pierced him through,
That sorrow made him restless with the truth:
That we'd have all too long to mourn, atone,
But you'd have just one day to live in stone,
Turned inward, trapped, and dropping out of sight,
Your footprint sinking deep in graveyard blight,
Your sadness given voice by downward gaze
That pierces where he lies--too soon--three friends
Now caught beyond the power of my lens.
 
Our hearts are full of stone.  And when I'm dead
I’ll know just where to lay my spinning head--
I’ll feel you stretching up into the sky,
Your eyes--my eyes--alike too sad to dry.
Your roses in my arms. 
                                                My billowing hair,
Cast loose, like yours floats out upon the air.