A Magazine of Many Arts

Beth Cato

this pie crust
is not made with mere
flour, salt, sugar, butter
it's formed of words
a magic spell
echoed in blue ink
on paper warped and stained
I have the recipe memorized
yet each time I prepare a pie
I pull out the sheet
each time, I read aloud


to join a chorus of women
some voices I cannot identify
though my grandmother's 
cigarette-tinged rasp stands out
together they scold me
to trickle cold water
into the dry mixture
to press pebbles of butter
flat between my fingertips
to mix everything together
but not to overwork it


when people wonder
why my pies taste much better
than the ones from the store
I only say 'it's homemade'
I must refrain
from telling the truth
that they eat the artistry
of a hundred years of ghosts
that my spirit, too
will gain immortality
through pastry

Jennifer Crow

for Anne

At first glance, the two don’t have much in common:
the places cast into darkness, and the objects,
rituals, locations which bring the divine close. Yet hope
grows in the interstices where fact hasn’t crowded it
out of sight, the liminal moments that drift
like a feather from the clouds, perhaps an angel
or maybe a hawk striking the killing blow.
This juxtaposition sometimes jars, the sharp edges
of the world ground to smoothness over a lifetime
of doubt—yet we take comfort even in the hawk’s
fierce triumph, the bloodied talon clenched tight
on its morsel of flesh, our own hunger sated
for a moment when we recall the fragile and broken.
We too have crouched, shattered, in the shadows
and waited to catch the eyes of gods.

Daniel Ausema

The architecture in the library of whispers
holds onto every breath half spoken,
records them in its own flourishes and whimsies.
The shelves hum with sighs and insinuations,
and innuendos flutter among the rafters

On lonely days patrons
follow the wafting memory of a loved one’s words
among the stacks, tracking its position
by a decimal system built on scent.
Once found, the whisper expands, surrounds
the patron, the shelves, the world,
granting the aural bones for life to flesh out.

On tense days, officials come to track down
scarcely-spoken sedition
and clues to ancient crimes.
Only by luck do they find either

The gothic waterspouts outside
spill their secrets only when it rains
but are said to hold the oldest
and least understood of the library’s mysteries.

Robin Wyatt Dunn

Come with, Come with, down into Faerie,
Under the slip and sides of the glade;
Be showered with gifts.

"She bled from her mouth," the digger said,

"and we all stopped along the ditch,
and lay down our spades.

"Her skin was white as death,
and we stood and followed her into the trees.

"The barks of the elms curled under the sun,
whose rays turned blue,
and her teeth, into black chunks.

"Eamon said we would not return,
But I knew we would,
Because there was blood under her feet:
She had been weakened,
And needed our help to slip back into Faerie.

"We stood under a secret eye
and slid her limbs under the earth.
She shuddered like a crone
under her maiden sky.

"Afterwards, we could not find our spades.
I was out of work for three weeks,
& my hands they stayed cold all Spring.

"Eamon got a look in his eye then.
And I told him
'Go South, to the sea;
go into it;
and away from here.'
She still wanted him, you see.

"But he would not go.
One midnight I saw him by the well,
circling like a wounded crow.
I cried out,
But my mouth could make no sound.

"In the morning he was dead;
drowned. But not in the well.
His lungs was full of her bright blood.

"In digging, some times we bestir the edges
of their earths;
And sometimes I have told a tale I knew not to be true,
So that they would not return before winter."