NIGHT FOREST: Folk Poetry & Story

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Night Forest

FOLK POETRY & STORY

Featured Authors: Katharyn Howd Machan

Gary Beaumier

Editors: Beth Gulley

Polly Alice McCann

Illustrated by: Elke Trittel

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all the individual authors. The press assumes a nonexclusive right to publish this collection and republish at

will in revised editions or forms. Contributor authors

may also retain copyright and republish. Others must

have the permission of the individual author.

Cover Art by Elke Trittel “Morning Has Broken”

Salt & Fig Books folksy, narrative, free verse that is

down to earth and strangely satisfying. Salt & Fig is the

poetry imprint of Flying Ketchup Press ® a trademarked

small. Our dream is to salvage lost treasure troves

of written and illustrated work–to create worlds of

wonder and delight; to share stories.

Maybe yours.

Find us at www.flyingketchuppress.com

quotations or reviews, no part of this publication may

be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any

means without written permission from the publisher.

The events, characters and dreams depicted in the

stories are fictitious, unless otherwise noted. Any

similarity to actual persons, living or dead, is purely

coincidental.

All inquiries should be addressed to:

Flying Ketchup Press

11608 N. Charlotte Street, Kansas City, MO 64115.

Library of Congress Catalog

Night Forest: Folk Poetry & Story

Softback ISBN-13: 978-1-970151-26-8

Ebook ISBN-13: 978-1-970151-62-6

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Appreciative acknowledgment to the publications in

which the following poems previously appeared:

By Agnes Vojta: “Ephemeral” in Porous Land, Spartan

Press 2019, “Those Sweet Sticky Summer Nights” in

The Eden of Perhaps, Spartan Press 2020, By Katharyn

Howd Machan: “Hazel Tells LaVerne” by in Rapscallion’s

Dream, 1981, “Gingerbread” in Luna Negra, Spring

2006. “Learning to Lie” in december, Fall/Winter 2016,

“Peneleope” in Earth’s Daughters, No. 59/60, “Helen”

in Nimrod International Journal, 34, No., “Paris” in The

Poets’ Touchstone, 57, No. 1.“Now you see me” by

Charlene Moskal in the Oyez Review. “Learning to Lie/

Nice Girl” in december Fall/Winter 2016. “Jim Morrison

Sings with Coyote” by Lindsey Martin-Bowen in Thorny

Locust, Vol. 22.1 (2016), this poem is part of Crossing

Kansas with Jim Morrison, which won the Kansas Authors

Club’s 2017 “Looks Like a Million” contest. “If Night So

Too the Morning” by Gary Beaumier in August 2019 in

The Esthetic Apostle. “Night Forest” in My Family to Yours

(Finishing Line Press) as well as in Shelia-Na-Gig. “The

Complete History of Our First Kiss” by Gary Beaumier

in Wingless Dreamers.

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DEDICATION

For those travel night forests

and share dreams by day

to my wife Mary and my son Ben

and my daughter Mara ~G.B.

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Elke Trittel

Bientot, See You Soon

Ink drawing, collage on paper 15x15 cm

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From the Editors

Dear Reader,

Here we have brought to you an authentic collection of folk voices in art, poetry, and story where with a

“flash and rumble” you may enter the shared dream and come out as anyone you wish. You’ll notice a found

poem created by Beth Gulley hidden within this book. Each section’s name is taken from one line of our

title poem by Gary Beaumier. As you read, the “Night Forest” grows encompassing more and more voices;

echoing, layering, building, as you go deeper into the “night forest.”

Thank you to our featured artist, Elke Trittel whose art inspired the layout of this book and perfectly

displayed visually the necessary and boundless energy folk art brings to its audience; a dream space where

the subconscious can heal, play, and bring forth its dark natures into the light for wholeness, playfulness,

and insight. Thank you also to our featured poet, Katharyn Howd Machan who inspired the call for art and

poetry by a single, powerful poem “Clouds.” It features the voice of the giant’s wife from the folk stories

of Jack the giant killer. We built this volume by seeking more narratives like her work. We were delighted

when our call brought in just what we were looking for: stories both historical and personal–folk narratives

that simplify experience and relationship into tight packages that withstand distance and time.

The work inside this book fights for forgotten wonder and reaches into colorful truths with new bite.

Reading this collection makes us want to take up the dark path and find the heart of our inner hero. Thank

you for sharing your love of story with us.

With deep gratitude, we must also truly thank Hope Houtwed our main staff support and super reader

of submissions 2019-2020 and our guest jurors: Mary Silwance, Agnes Vogta, Araceli Esparza, and Lindsey

Martin-Bowen. A big thank you to our interns Lauren McAfee, Nathanael Quezada, and Ashley Anderson.

We must also thank Hope Houtwed for her weekly inspirational motivations to create Ketchupedia and

our word of the day podcast. Thanks in huge indebtedness to Dr. Alice Hixson for her daily support and

for sharing her dedication to Flying Ketchup Press and making this book possible. “Life is story,” she says.

Most of all we thank you poets and authors, who submitted their work to us. They served as small crystals

of hope and light throughout the 2019-2020 pandemic,. Each word was worth the wait. We feel your down

to earth voices grounded us in the traditions of story telling: the root system of that daily human balance

between waking and dreaming; a space for imagination giving healing, insight, energy and direction.

With love,

Your editors,

Beth & Polly

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C o n t e n t s

Once

Caroline Laganas 1

Buzzed

Luna Dragon Mac-Williams 2

Boogie (After Terrance Hayes)

Janet McMillan Rives 3

BlueHour

Carrying Yesterday

Claire-Elise Baalke 4 - 6

Wood Pigeon

Breathe

Aleppo Chicken

The Hum

Gloria Heffernan 7

Stone on Stone

Mud Season

A.E. Hines 8

The Last Men on Earth

Deborah Rosch Eifert 9

Grimoire: Magical Love Glue

Lindsey Martin Bowen 10

Jim Morrison Sings With Coyote

Antoine Rufus 11

Sunheart

Mervyn Seivwright 12

Play ya card man or pass

Cara Morgan 12

Long Day

Elizabeth Tomanio 1 3

Black Cherries

*Caroline Sidney 14

Swan Song

m

In the Night Forest

Gary Beaumier 23 - 29

If Night So Too the Morning

The Complete History of Our First Kiss

Night Forest

Merely Us

On the Second Occasion of His Passing

To the Lighthouse

From Certain Distances...I Still See My Brother

Jerome Berglund 30

A Haiku

James Kotsybar 30

Matter of Perspective

Andi Talbot 31

A good Night’s Sleep

Running Low

Hi-Vis

Lazarus Trubman 32

Face of War

A Frozen Moment

Agnes Vojta 33

Ephemeral

Those Sweet Sticky Summer Nights

Letter from the Ozarks...

*Katie Sakanai 35

Fomka

m

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Flash & Rumble

Katharyn Howd Machan 39 - 41

Clouds

Jack

Gingerbread

Charlene Moskal 43 - 44

Now you see me, now you...

It’s Always Only You...

Then I Wonder

Karen S. Henry 45

Birch bark

Candice Kelsey 46

like a collapsed lung

Eric Machan Howd 47 - 48

Notes on Genre

Prince of Briar-Rose

Charming’s Lament

Vivian O’shaughnessy 49 - 52

Blind Girl’s Piano Prologue

Funky Sonnet

The Interrogation

Katharyn Howd Machan 53 - 54

Penelope

Helen

Paris

*Hayden Moore 55

Briefest Use

m

Dreams Returned

Polly Alice 61 - 62

Night Garden Cantos iii ~it’s night

Come to the Night Garden

Beth Gulley 63

And then he tweeted...

I Meet New Birds Along the Bay

Gene Fendt 63

The frog–prince, after

Alan Hill 64 - 65

The Chimpanzee

The Phoenix

The Housecat

Diane Glancy 66

The Game Event

National Register of Historic Places

I Could Face the Bare Pages

Barbara Meier 68

Storm Woman

Charlene Moskal 69

Cavity

Blue-green

Dellabough Robin 69

Color Craft

Katharyn Howd Machan 70

Hazel Tells LaVerne

Learning to Lie, the Nice Girl

Polly Alice 71 - 72

Gerda & the Snow Queen

Puss ‘N Boots

Jaidyanne Podsobinski, 73

The Girl Who Cried Man

Adriana Morgan 74

Falling In Love

Hope Houtwed 75

The Plastic Bag & The Shower Stall

Louise Moises 76

Sidewalk Friendship

*Hayli McClain 77

Good Gal

m

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Beyond the Register of Our Knowing

Araceli Esparza 85

Shadow

Hidden

Lindsey Peknik Bales 86

Keyhole

Mathew Babcock 87

The Fifth of July

Julie Ann Baker Brin 88

Orogenesis

Augmented

Spark

Paula Bonnell 89

We Prepare For the Eleusinian Mysteries

Thunk & Splash

Paul Dresman 90

Dressmaker’s Dummy

Connor Drexler 91

Banging of Bones

Joseph Murphy 92

The Singing

Serra Rita 93

Born Again Nyctophile

Khadijah Lacina 96

First Touch

Jennifer Thal 97 - 99

Rothko Purity

Body Politics for a Minotaur

The Birth of Lily

Mary Silwance 100

Peony

Fig

Hannah Hinsch 101

Circe

Cris Tyser 102

Rapunzel

*Lauren Tunnell 103

The Eleventh Night

*Kevin Calahan 108

Just a Pile of Stones

Steven Sassman 110

I’m in Love with the Dark

m

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Elke Trittel

Waiting for the Full Moon

Ink drawing, collage on paper 15x15 cm

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Once

m

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1

Night Forest

After drinking

too much

caffeinated

sunlight,

the jacaranda

grows

jittery

and restless,

turning

pale indigo.

Caroline Laganas

Buzzed

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2

Folk Poetry & Story

As soon as this all is over, I can’t wait to have

dance parties again. Just like this. My mom said,

and my dad pulled her in close. It was 10:32 on a

Sunday night and the blue light bulb he screwed

in tight was leaking liquid mercury on our whitetile dining room floor. Not actually. Let me begin

again. Sergio Mendez and Ciara. Michael Jackson

and Roy Ayers. Don Omar and Daddy Yankee.

Sean Paul and a DJ called Spiller. Chanteuses

and crooners crowding that track that never

got credit for voices that haunt these Chicago

house-built houses. I unscrew myself and let my

elbows fly .I think, you could track a lifetime in

songs stuck on repeat. Hermanita next to me, all

bones and limbs and lithe aliveness, says, this is

why I love this family. Ma and Pa forget the fight

they’ll probably have later, let love bubble up

without catching in their throat, let their bodies

catch light from the other’s smile, and I see the

couple who kicked off the floor, so they always

say, at every club, every party, and I see where I

get my abandon. At 11:11 I wish for a lifetime of

impromptu dance parties. Let me begin again. At

11:11 I wish for a world of dance parties.

Let me begin again. At 11:11 I wish for a dance

party so good it deconstructs self-interest. For

a groove to catch, a beat to drop, and it all to

shake down okay. With this verse, my mama

praises the patients she’ll wake up and take to

tomorrow. With this chorus, my dad pushes

back the attacking signs that he might have colon

cancer (?). With this bridge, hermanita says, I

miss this when we go too long without. I spin her

like we learned in dance. My dad says, you could

be twins. He says, Luna, you could lead those

cha-cha lessons on cruise ships. My hips, boyish

but heartbreaking, laugh. Tracks later, Pa trickles

off y hermanita también, and Ma and I are belting

about twenty-something sadnesses she hasn’t

grappled with in some time but I’m wading my

way through presently. Between taking her hair

down and kicking off her shoes she says, baby,

you deserve the world, and I almost miss it. If I

get this world, I will bring it back to her, like our

cat with his hacked-up birds. It’s the least you

can do for the lady that lifted you into this liminal

landscape. We shimmy until we get tired. m

Luna Dragon Mac-Williams

B o o g i e ( A f t e r T e r r a n c e H a y e s )

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3

Night Forest

The light this time of day is from street lamps,

shop windows, headlights, cigarette tips.

The sun has set beneath a sky of spilled ink.

My last class, La Langue Française, just let out

and I am walking down boulevard Saint-Michel

tempted to stop for a crêpe or gaufre

yet knowing a scrumptious dinner awaits.

Temptation wins and I head to the Métro

holding a warm, sugary crêpe rolled inside

crinkly paper, eight steps per bite.

All of Paris is going home at this hour,

home from work or school or errands.

Local smells envelop me–diesel

from bus 38, the pungent odor of Gauloises,

a faint scent of Guerlain L’Heure Bleue.

I head toward Odéon ready to squeeze myself

into a crowded subway car, prepared

for the ten-stop ride to Eglise d’Auteuil

then a short walk, a delicious meal,

conversation less strained now,

more flowing. The vibrancy of early

evening nudges me home.

Janet McMillan

Rives

BlueHour

Water

buoys a boat.

Cargo shifts

port to starboard

back again

spills luggage

keepsakes

letters

portraits

teacups

heartache

elation.

Water

gentle at times

then rough enough

to dislodge a vessel

laden with weight

of long ago.

Janet McMillan

Rives

Carrying Yesterday

after Lucille Clifton

“The Mississippi Empties Into the Gulf”

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4

Folk Poetry & Story

The first day was spent in peaceful thatch cottage,

spiders and their homely webs aside, the cooing from

the common wood pigeons from above

filled me with your soft whisperings

as if I’d turn aside and you’d be there with your

Romanesque nose and hair falling over glasses,

pale blue eyes staring and laughing,

a joy specifically ascribed to the thought of pigeons—

a wood pigeon, in its large, yet not unseemly

charm warbled away in the small gated garden,

a centralized tree sat partially barren

and I thought of you, missing you already

in such a foreign place—

Thames calm motion a quarter mile away

with the floating grace of swans did less to

incite my love, a cordiality of distance and insincerity,

which unlike these common, but, surprisingly large pigeons

didn’t express a mutual understanding of the beauty

in such simple things as this.

Claire-Elise Baalke

Wood Pigeon

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5

Night Forest

You never watch me while I dance,

I raise my hands above my head;

you never hear me when I sing:

jugular exposed, white like milk.

I sprinkle thyme generously,

and fill the spaces between

with tomato and garlic.

With a twirl and point of the toe,

an exuberant sigh,

I place the dish, its walls holding

the heart of an ancient city,

in the oven to await the armaments

of time. Timer ticking down to

when antiquity was sweet.

Claire-Elise Baalke

A l e p p o C h i c k e n

In such small moments as

these you tapping your finger

against the window, the sand

in its diaphanousness mocks

a clinking, the sound of rain

or hail: the bar for interest

arousal, a sporadic rain

storm on an otherwise

sunny, cloudless day. We

hunker down under the

covers; the fan curtails waves

over its surface and we sink

down to the bottom onto

softened melding clay and

mineral surrounded by fish

and salt and blue staring into

each other’s widened eyes—

throttle toward surface

lungs exasperated, a fresh

survivalist fear in our bosoms

stretching that final streak,

so close, until we take in air.

Claire-Elise Baalke

Breathe

P:19

6

Folk Poetry & Story

Claire-Elise Baalke

T h e H u m

Staring out the windowpane to the blooming choke cherry tree,

the seasons fade together before my eyes,

the change between notes, an F to an F flat,

as like the hum and our circadian rhythms.

That night as we lay upon the floor and couch

disconcerted by the high-pitched sound,

an elusive disturbance—a nation-wide hypnosis

exuding from a hydro plant down the way

creating dissonance through nontraditional sleeping arrangements.

Discordant noise faded into the background,

the tinnitus or mystery still left unsolved,

as we fade and dissipate through all the sound and season.

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7

Night Forest

Ten thousand feet above the Cliffs of Moher,

I stare out the window

at the meandering seams of stone walls

stitching together the Irish countryside.

Unseen from that altitude

is the space between the stones,

air passages to keep the walls standing

against the violent Atlantic gales.

Anger swirls in the air between us

like wind across the Burren,

as we pile stone on stone

slathering each with mortar,

ignoring the lessons

our ancestors taught us,

recklessly erecting a wall

that will never stand up to the storm.

It is that other advent,

waiting for that other savior

in the space between the seasons.

It is the squelching sound

of sneakers smeared and sucked

in slippery muck—

The season that

hovers

just beyond the flower bed

where the tulips are beginning to tingle—

It is that season that cannot decide

between snow and rain

between lion and lamb—

The comma between

those two bickering siblings

Winter and Spring—

The protracted countdown

to the fulfillment

of a long-awaited promise.

Gloria Heffernan

Stone on Stone Mud Season

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8

Folk Poetry & Story

It is that other advent,

waiting for that other savior

in the space between the seasons.

It is the squelching sound

of sneakers smeared and sucked

in slippery muck—

The season that

hovers

just beyond the flower bed

where the tulips are beginning to tingle—

It is that season that cannot decide

between snow and rain

between lion and lamb—

The comma between

those two bickering siblings

Winter and Spring—

The protracted countdown

to the fulfillment

of a long-awaited promise.

Because the blooms come first and later the leaves, by

the middle of spring you might not know the

magnolia flowers are dying. Bright pink blossoms

drop petal after petal, not just falling in the breeze,

but falling apart, fall like a flutter of butterflies to

settle on the damp ground.

Some mornings, the sun breaks through the sky’s

wool blanket and beckons us out to the terrace, and

for hours we lounge there in just our boxers. The air

still cool enough to pimple the flesh, raise the hair on

our legs, but the sun so warm, we linger.

Our fourth week hiding from the virus, and the

blossoms all fallen. We sweep them up, place them like

a sacrifice into giant paper bags, and leave them by the

curb of our quiet street.

We could be the last two men on earth: lovers,

husbands this morning sipping coffee, adjusting

face masks for our afternoon walk, doing our best

with stay-at-home haircuts.

Today, you sit on the bathroom stool and stare into the

mirror in horror as the electric clippers buzz. I cup

your ear in my hand, rake my fingers through your hair,

and wonder how long it will take to sweep up these

flowers which fall over your shoulders and rise in tiny

drifts from the cold tiled floor.

A.E. Hines

The Last Men on Earth

P:22

9

Night Forest

To bind your final lover to you,

Use your tears from a bitter argument

to water an angelica plant, grown in secret.

During a waxing moon,

harvest the angelica seeds,

in a number equal to your age.

Singing as loudly as possible,

candy the angelica seeds in a simple syrup

of equal parts sugar and water, brought to a boil,

adding a touch of your blood, for color and salt.

In the quietest place you can find

which does not belong to you,

eat the sweetened angelica seeds one at a time,

whispering “Now and forever!”

between bites.

March home, beating a drum made from a gourd.

If you are discovered

during any of these steps,

jump up and shout

“I have forgotten

the names of

Every

Single

One

of my past lovers!”

Twirl three times in place,

then begin the whole process again.

Once you make it home,

wash tension away

with a hot bath.

Make a meal

to share with your chosen one,

consuming all.

Eat chocolate.

Speak together by touch

in the language

of old familiar bones.

I refuse to weep forever.

Deborah Rosch Eifert

G r i m o i r e : M a g i c a l L o v e G l u e

P:23

10

Folk Poetry & Story

Lindsey Martin Bowen

Jim Morrison Sings With Coyote

Under a huge orange moon,

the two of them sit on a fence

and howl, as if they sang the blues

in some skanky bar Coyote knows

on the dark side of Old LA town.

It’s almost Halloween and maybe

they’re rehearsing for another gig

in this desert scene where our mouths

grow dry with every breath, and tumble-

weeds interrupt each tune.

If coyote wore black, leather pants,

he could double for Jim and fill in

when Morrison drank too much

Jack Daniels or when his veins

or nose grew cold with smack.

And tonight, Coyote may have snorted

a line or two—cold winds come from him

like he’s some ice cube. He gazes with Jim’s

distant stare—as if a Shaman possesses them.

P:24

11

Night Forest

Her kisses are strong enough to sweep wind into

the calmest storm.

With honey almond eyes gazing into mines with

the sweetest glaze.

Putting my heart into perpetual stupors of

stammered palpitations trying to

find the words to describe it’s own beat.

It erupts into poetic prophecies predicting

paralyzing parables that feel like salvation.

With feelings high enough to reach past heaven

it’s no wonder we’re so scared to fall. Sometimes

glass roses grow on bad soil and we become so

blinded by their beauty that we forget how fragile

they are.

So fearful that half full is more empty than thirst

quenched.

That our flags are more red than matador art. I

can’t help but hope that we’re better at dodging

the bullshit.

Romantic love can feel like the most sane

insanity. A euphoric madness induced by the

most sober loneliness.

A place where we fool ourselves into forever,

sometimes a secure embrace can feel like a

broken lock.

We learn how to build walls so that our hearts

don’t suffer the robbery of love.

Because it’s so hard to be less than the music

we’re born with.

To tune ourselves back into harmony after

breaks that play us into discord.

My mind a constant ramble of hypotheticals

trying to analyze the data in your smile.

Wondering how long the tactile touch of my

hands can turn your body into oxytocin rush.

Kissing your brain into the dopest serotonin

ecstasy. Every time I grasp your hands I want

the molecules of my affection to clasp your

synapses into a neuronal storm of emotions

more powerful than neutron bonds condensed

into a star.

There is a pain in knowing that these subjective

experiences are just an objective fluctuation

of chemicals meandering in our minds for the

purpose of evolution.

Yet I still want to evolve with you.

Beyond the boundaries of this physical physiology

into spirits more intricate than the most

metaphysical philosophies.

I do not need you...for every atom you’ve ever

carried has always been with me, but I

do want you enough for love to last a God’s

lifetime. m

Antoine Rufus

Sunheart

P:25

12

Folk Poetry & Story

spouted the gruff old Jamaican

accent of my father, my partner as this moment.

Cards referred to the domino pieces.

My father smiles showing off

the pride of his son with friends

generations which flocked the Windrush ship

migrating as English citizens that built brick

by brick of crumbled England, Humpty

Dumpty in Hitler’s Great War, from bombed walls

of homes and hospitals. Puzzle-pieces

stripped from the picture.

My father’s generation filling the blue-collared labor

taking England off an IV

West Indians not loved in England, these men

grinding in factories, running

the railways, sweeping the streets. These men

content in this pub, next to my father

at the domino table, wrinkled, gray

as the foggy cigarette smoke, tell

sprightly stories drinking pints of lager and rum.

Mervyn Seivwright

P l a y y a c a r d m a n o r p a s s

Cara Morgan

L o n g D a y

hang your jacket

remove your shoes

put up your feet

on me.

give me your gravity

to carry for a while.

let me hold you,

gentle soul.

give me your

gravity, walk

taller, be

lighter.

P:26

13

Night Forest

I bought black cherries

remembering

how she would say

“the body is a temple.”

I was always so casual

and careless with adding

sweet and bitter tastes.

She knew better,

for wisdom ripens with age.

I recall the night I drove her home

to a neighborhood I deemed unsafe,

watched her proceed through the unlatched gate

up the sidewalk and stairs

in her long black skirt.

How had life gotten this way?

Who treated her well,

as she had unfailingly treated me—

offering either cherries or kiwi

when it was her only meal

scraping off half-eaten food

stuck to plates, steaming residue

seeping in as the dishes rinsed,

never receiving a break.

From her small portions, she offered

for my gain.

I think about who drives her home now,

how when I pulled away

her head remained high.

In line to buy the cherries,

I understood,

at the threshold of her door that night,

and all others before,

she had been looking after me.

Elizabeth Tomanio

B l a c k C h e r r i e s

P:27

14

Folk Poetry & Story

My old name meant little song, and I always hated that. It’s the name version of an older woman patting

you on the head when you’re too old to have to put up with such touches but still young enough to be

patronized in that particular way. I want to scream at them. I am not a child to be patted. I am not a

song to be enjoyed. I am not Such A Nice Girl with Beautiful Hair!

I actually liked my hair, which is all that kept me from taking my sewing scissors to it in my old life. But

I don’t need to scream as much now that I’m allowed to…Now that a bird-like voice is my reality and not

some inane attempt at poetry. Now that my battle cry is closer to a goose’s than a lark’s. Listen to this

“little song,” ladies. Pat my head and call me beautiful. I dare you.

Swans bite, which is one of my favorite parts of my transformation.

Another prince comes, more determined than the last two but never as determined as the first. I beg

the baron to just make our land impossible to find, but part of the fun of it for him is being found. He likes

to play the villain. He likes the notoriety it earns him in certain sorcerers’ minds. It gains him enough fame

to keep his prices high, and as he reminds me, maintaining a magical kingdom and seven enchanted maidens

isn’t cheap. Especially when we have a taste for the rare and beautiful, he reminds me with a smirk.

I know he’s talking about the grimoire he hunted down for me last month, but I am unrepentant. I’ve

never been more in love with anything than I am with that book. I glare at him in the moonlight, thinking of

the other transformations I’ve mastered lately. Frogs are another classic. I transform into my swan form,

honk in his face, and leave a wet turd by his feet before I flap off for a paddle in the lake with my sisters.

Certain things can be expressed better in this form, especially since they tried their best to teach me to

express nothing as a human girl.

The baron laughs, and his rich voice rolls over me with mirth. I might laugh with him if I weren’t a swan

now, just because I could. I swing wildly from emotion to emotion these days, and I love that. I love all the

things that are forbidden to beautiful princesses but aren’t forbidden to beautiful enchanted princesses who

are never going home.

Above all, I love the magic I’ve learned these past seven years.

The first time I was transformed, I was frightened. Who wouldn’t be? Some of the girls never quite get

over it, and we always let them be rescued. True love’s kiss is the best lie sorcerers ever invented. Even

the powerful need to set up loopholes sometimes, or be trapped forever with weepy saps that make your

life a drag.

The second time, I paid attention. It hurts when your bones begin to reshape you into something new,

but it is also utterly fascinating. It’s magic.

And I wanted it more than I had ever wanted anything. So much that I thought maybe I hadn’t actually

ever wanted anything before. I still don’t know if that’s true or not. My previous life seems like a faded

tapestry. Someone set it on fire, maybe, but afterward, I got to hang a new one in that spot. Something

different, with brighter colors.

The hero from that old tapestry was a bit of a problem. Something dull and tiresome that escaped into

Caroline Sidney

S w a n S o n g

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Night Forest

my new colorful world, like a smudge of dirt against

golden thread. Siegfried. A dumb name. I imagined

spending the rest of my life saying that name and

felt tears prickle at the thought of such dullness. It

sounded like becoming a woman who would enjoy

embroidering pillows for him to ignore or maybe

even to use but also drool on in his sleep. It sounded

like a woman who would never be allowed to go for

long rides through the forest, who would have to sit

primly in a chair with her legs closed for the rest of

her life, who would always have to worry about the

health of her womb and never her mind.

Siegfried thought he was my hero, but he had no

idea in that tiny brain of his that coming home with

him after this adventure would kill me faster than

anything. He thought I was in danger here, when this

place is the safest place for someone who turned

out to be a beast at heart, enchanted or not.

The only thing you can do with a swan you bring

home is eat it and then stuff it.

I refused to be consumed.

I refused to relinquish my skies.

So the baron and I concocted a plan. We had her

consent, of course. With her beautiful, waving hair

the color of white gold and cerulean eyes, she was

as enchanting as she was already enchanted. Not

that I’m shabby, but she had an otherworldliness to

her that I either lack entirely or have lost in this lake.

Her name was Evelyn, but I gladly gave her mine. It

wasn’t even a thing to hesitate about.

When Siegfried laid eyes on us first, we were

swans drifting on the waters, waiting for the kiss

of the moon. We put a tiny golden crown around

Evelyn-now-Odette’s neck, so he would know right

away which one to pay attention to. Stupid, stupid

man.

And to spout such tripe to her when she

transformed, about how she was even more

beautiful than he remembered. With my memories,

she did a good show of being the enchanted me.

Long lost childhood sweethearts, separated by an

evil sorcerer and all that. Evelyn gladly shared all her

past: the creepy uncle, the absent parents, the tiny,

poor kingdom that didn’t even survive the year she

was with us. Her uncle had sold it to the highest

bidder as soon as she was gone. So Evelyn really

had nothing to lose, and she desperately wanted

something of her own to possess. I was glad to give

her what little I had left, to trade it for a new name

and a new life.

The baron threatened and pretended and

generally put on a good show while the rest of us

shrank into the background. And do you know, that

asshole Siegfried never once considered freeing the

other swan maidens? He had his Swan Queen, and

that’s all that mattered. I stood in the back row with

my new black hair and pretended to be happy for

them while I seethed.

We’ve played this bit of theater a few times over

the years since, and every rescuer so far has been

just as narrow-sighted. None of them look twice at

anyone but their preferred set of ovaries. It infuriates

me. It doesn’t matter that most of us don’t want to

be rescued; it’s the principle of the thing.

Sometimes I think I would go home with the first

one that proves me wrong and tries to rescue all

of us, but I know I wouldn’t last long. I might enjoy

being his sorceress instead of his wife, I muse. His

sorceress could give him so much more than sons

and fame, and he might not make her pay with the

sky. But no one had ever offered.

The baron calls me back over to the shore. He

tells me he trusts me to handle this latest prince

and protect the others, and I am filled with pride

and pleasure. He’s heading out on another trip

and doesn’t see any reason to delay just because

someone new is poking around.

I transform back into a woman, clothing myself

as I go in black pants and a long black suit coat that

is shirt-length in the front, dress-length in the back.

My dark hair sweeps itself into a braided crown with

black feathers tucked into it behind my ears. The

baron grins at me. I have a flair for the dramatic,

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Folk Poetry & Story

which is part of why we get along so well. He, of all

people, understands it. He nods at me, the image

of a sorceress who might keep maidens captive as

swans and hands me the reins of his protection

spells. Then he transforms into a small hawk and

flies away.

I turn and face my sister-charges and call them

close. I communicate to their swan-shaped minds

that there is another intruder. None volunteer to

snare the intruder romantically, so the drill is simple

from here: swans until the annoyance has gone. I

will face him alone and send him on his way, most

likely with magic. Words are a poor deterrent for

most men.

I cloak myself in shadows and watch the new

prince poke around, wondering whether he’ll actually

try to save one of us or if he’ll choose instead to go

home with the sad version of the tale: the sorcerer

stealing us away to a different location, or the prince

barely escaping with his life, or that there was only

one of us and he didn’t know it was a spell ‘til the

arrow struck and the swan died as a maiden. A fair

number choose to lie about what they find here. So

many of them prefer the story of us to the reality.

I watch the prince as he skulks about our land in

the soft twilight. He comes with purpose. Someone

has talked in specifics, and I think it was probably

Siegfried. That asshole is going to haunt me all of my

days, one way or another.

He goes straight for the lake and hides in the

bushes near the edge as he waits for the moon

to rise. I watch him for a long time, wrapped in

shadows and silence, considering my options. He’s

more patient than some. One I remember rattled

the reeds on the western edge of the lake–as if he

could startle the swans hiding there into revealing

themselves as women. They couldn’t, even if that did

startle them. The others don’t have their own magic

to control the transformation without the baron’s

help. Or mine, now.

I decide to reveal myself to him before the moon

rises, curious what breed of hero-to-be we’ve

drawn this time. I step right in front of his hiding

place before I drop the shadows and silence, then

revel a little in his startled yeep, and the way he falls

flat on his back.

“What brings you here?” I ask.

He stammers something barely coherent about a

legend he heard in a tavern of the swan maidens and

his father’s demand to prove himself.

“And the swan queen, with her golden crown

around her neck, is the key to them all” He says,

gathering his wits. “If she is freed, her handmaidens

will be as well. With true love’s kiss, the spell will be

broken.”

I sigh.

“There are several problems with your plan.”

I say. “ For one: in some versions, it’s the tears

of her dying lover that do the trick. I don’t think

that’s the way you want to go. Two: you’re assuming

love at first sight is going to work? That’s the most

ridiculous nonsense. None of these girls have ever

met you, so why would you think any of them would

love you enough to be able to break a spell? That

kind of love takes a lifetime, don’t be fooled by

the stories. Three: there isn’t actually any royalty

left here–if pedigree is an issue for you. The last

princess found her prince long ago.” Which is true.

I am not a princess anymore, and like hell would I let

a stranger kiss me, anyways.

“Four: I don’t intend for you to get anywhere near

the women in my care.” Five, I am not all convinced

I should let him leave alive. He knows too much, and

memory spells are tiresome to maintain.

The prince stands up, dusting leaves and grass off

his immaculate clothes. He does look like a fairytale

prince, unrumpled, even after his trek through the

woods and his tumble from when I startled him.

I’m always a little irritated at people who can keep

themselves so clean without magic. Although the

baron taught me that royal lines do draw magic to

themselves–that’s so often both the cause and the

result of all the stories that become whittled down

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Night Forest

to perfect fairytales in the retelling. Power of one

kind finds power of another. That was my family’s

story, to be sure.

“Sorceress, your reputation precedes you.”

He bows, and I want to laugh in his face at such

courtliness here in the woods with a bunch of

women that were beasts by choice.

“I am certain it does not, as I don’t currently

have any reputation outside of this estate.” I do

laugh in his face.

“Of course it does. I have heard many a tale of

this lake and your great magic.”

“And are you not afraid?” I ask archly, channeling

my stepmother’s haughty tone. I drop the argument,

letting him believe I am mistress and creator here.

That’s what the baron expects me to do in his stead,

after all, and he doesn’t need defending.

“I am not.” He steps closer, putting one hand

casually into the pouch at his side, “for I came armed

with more than a kiss, my lady.” And he tosses some

thing in his hand towards me.

It hangs in the air a moment–a cloak made of

some strange cloth of gold–more luminous than it

ought to be in the early moonlight. Without time

for fear, I stand unmoving dazzled by the brightness

of it.

My, but this prince isn’t entirely stupid, is he? I

think in the split second before it lands across my

right arm and shoulder. The moment the cloth

settles, I feel my magic roll up and leave like someone

taking out a dirty carpet. It feels like all the life is

being sucked out of my bones, like everything in me

is somehow both stewed down to nothing and dried

out to something sharp.

It hurts.

I scream, and the prince has the good grace to

look somewhat chagrined.

He turns away from me, facing the swan maidens

on the shore. They have been transformed and are

dripping wet where they had fallen into the lake

when he broke my hold on their spell, their thick

white cloaks dragging them downwards as they

struggle out of the lake. I grind my teeth at the pain

and curl into a ball, trying desperately to find any

magic left in me and summon it together. There is

nothing left.

“Fair maidens.” He kneels in front of the sodden

women on one knee, like he is proposing to them

all. “ I know not where your kingdoms lie, but I vow

to do all in my power to return you to your homes.

Until that time, you will be welcomed at my court,

and you shall want for nothing.”

Fury fills my bones from the bottom up, igniting

my veins and reducing the pain down to worthless

ash. I can almost taste it on my tongue. I start to

draw myself up and out from under the foul, golden

cloak. It slips off and lays in a puddle beside me, dull

and seemingly inert now.

“But, my prince,” says Erin, one of the supposed

prisoners, watching me rise, and I feel sure he misses

her acid tone at the title, “what if we don’t want to

return to our homes?”

He pauses in shock for a beat before answering

smoothly–

“Then, my lady, we shall endeavor to find a

husband for you from among my noble lords.”

“And if we don’t wish to marry?” Amilia says

next.

“Then, of course, our convents would make a

home for you.” The prince’s spine straightens in

horror, and I would laugh if I were made of anything

other than pain and fury. Laughter doesn’t live in me

anymore. The golden cloak took that, too. “The

sorceress is slain, and all shall be made right,” he says,

spreading his hands wide in theatrical magnanimity.

I am standing now, although I have been clearly

dismissed as a threat. I step forward and reach down

and draw his sword from his unguarded scabbard.

He turns from the sound as it slides out, shock

twisting an ugliness into his portrait-ready face. I

don’t wait for him to rise or make more speeches

or throw something else my way. That would be the

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height of stupidity.

I just swing–two-handed.

The problem with spines as stiff as his is that

they’re unnecessarily hard. The sword sticks midneck, and the shock of the blow rings up in my arms

and down through my hollowed-out bones like a

bell, replacing the golden-cape-magic-pain with the

more real kind.

I leave the sword and step back out of the way of

the pumping, pooling blood. The prince’s body very

slowly tips to the side and lays still.

“I hope no one wanted to go with that idiot.”

A bark of a laugh from someone, Amelia, I think.

I look at the others and see that the nearest few

have been, unfortunately, splattered with blood too.

I grimace.

“What a mess. I’m sorry. Let’s go get some clean

clothes.”

I turn to lead them back to the house. Greta

bends a hand towards the gold cloak.

“No! I’m not sure what it might do to you,” I

explain. “I think it’s gotten everything it can out

of me already.” Ilean down and test it. It doesn’t

do anything–sated, I think, from my feast. I wad it

up and stuff it under my arm, unwilling to throw

something like that away even though part of me

wants to sink it into the lake.

Tabitha steps up and slings an arm around my

shoulder, supporting me as we troop up to the

house. I am glad of it, though somewhat ashamed at

how uncertain my knees feel as I walk. I stop when

we get inside, letting them go on to our wing to

change clothes or whatever in the aftermath. I need

to store the cloak somewhere safe.

I make my way into the baron’s rooms at the

opposite end of the house. One of the doors off his

study leads to a sort of magic armory full of items he

has found or stolen or fought for. I never have been

sure of the definition, really, and I don’t particularly

care. I find an empty chest of the normal sort and

put the cloak inside, then go to the study for some

paper to write him a note about it, in case he finds

the cloak before I can explain what it does.

I shuck off my bloody coat and leave it lying in

a dark, wet heap on the floor. I sit at his desk, and

the comfort of the chair and familiarity of the worn

wood undoes me. I have sat here for so many years

now, studying at his side, dredging up and soaking

in every little scrap of magic I could find. In this

house, I have found more types of freedom than I

could ever have dreamed of when I was sitting in my

stepmother’s bower, bored to brainlessness.

That man outside thought he was saving a group

of women but we don’t need or want saving. Just as

fast as snapping your fingers. Poof, nothing was left.

My grimoire is still on the desk where I left it last,

but I don’t want to touch it just to feel it refuse to

open for me. I know I don’t have any magic left to

interest it. Power calls to power, and I have none.

Instead, I lay my head down on my hands and weep

for a few minutes, heedless of the blood still on my

hands and face. My tears go from hot rage to cold

grief and back again.

When I am as empty of tears as I am of magic, I

scrub at my eyes, savoring the different pain as the

heels of my hands press into them just a little too

hard. It grounds me. I refuse to weep forever.

So, my magic is gone. What next? I still have

options. I could stay in this house, no matter what.

The baron has made his home available to us for

as long as we want it. Amelia can paint every day

for the rest of her life. Tabitha likes to fish, Reyna

writes stories, and Irene and Erin work together to

sew our fabulous dresses with the cloth the baron

buys or magics into being. I can find a different place

here, and devote my life to something if I want. I

could probably lie abed and eat sweets until I am fat,

and the baron wouldn’t stop me. Wouldn’t that be

something?

But I don’t want any of that.

I like the way magic made me feel. The first time

I transformed myself all on my own, knowing that

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Night Forest

my bones were breaking and remaking me into

something new at my command, I felt like someone

completely different. I let myself be remade by it.

And I like who I am–who I was, I correct bitterly.

Someone capable, knowledgeable, strong. Someone

formidable. Someone with enough power that

I could be who I am without either altering my

essential self or fearing others.

Now I am the empty shell of that woman.

I let my hands fall from my eyes and see a lock

of my blonde hair also has blood in it. Blonde. I

am furious all over again. Even my hair color has

reverted. Even that was taken from me.

I write a terse note saying, Don’t touch the

golden cloak unless you want to lose all your magic,

too, and laid it on the chest.

Pausing on my way out, I turn and look back at

the armory. At all the items the baron had collected

over the years. Spells woven into weapons and

jewelry. Bottled memories. Books full of shadows

and songs that haven’t been free in this world for

decades. Goblets that could cure you or kill you,

depending.

I hesitate for a moment, staring at the items with

an idea swimming up through the murk of my loss.

He will understand. It’s how the baron got his start,

in fact. I certainly don’t have to wait around for

whatever charity he might throw my way.

Gods bless that man, he showed off so much

of his collection to me over the years. The idea

solidifies the clear light of it shining through me. I

know exactly what I want to take. I know exactly

what I want to do.

I take a belt of shadows, boots of silence, gloves

of containment. The wrist bracers’ brown leather

don’t match the rest of my stolen gear, but they

will improve my aim. I’ve never spent much time

practicing archery, but I will need to be decent at

it to survive.

Next, I go to the actual armory and take a bow

and a quiver, as well as two long knives that are not

quite daggers and not quite swords, that sheathe

in an X across my back. Then I raid the kitchen for

food. Kaileen doesn’t question my gear, just helps

me fill a bag with bread and cheese and anything

else we think might keep. She kisses my cheek and

tells me to come home soon and safely. I don’t make

any promises, but the sentiment soothes some of

the rage I have tucked up under my breastbone for

safekeeping.

I stop back by the study and write the baron

another note. Gone hunting. I sign it Diana. A new

name for a new chapter.

At the door, I hug each of the women that have

become my family over the years. Kaileen must

have told them what I was up to, but they don’t try

to keep me. That is a gift they’d learned from the

baron, who was never our captor. They just kiss my

cheek and wish me fortune and safe travels.

Tabitha is last, closest to the door. She pulls

back from me, eyeing my new possessions. Then

she swings the clean white cloak from her own

shoulders and settles it around mine, pulling up the

hood before meeting my eyes with her firm gaze.

“Take everything you can.” She says.

“That’s the plan.” I say. I step back and look at

my gathered sisters. The lonely ones had all left

over the years, and those who remained had been

distilled into what I thought of as the strongest of

all the womanhood in the world. They are fiercely

themselves, and I want to weep at the thought,

feeling for once that I’m not quite their equal

anymore. But maybe I can be.

I will come back eventually, I think, but first, I have

some things to do. The few magic items I took from

the baron hum quietly against my bones, resonating

against the space the golden cloak had boiled clean.

I will go find enough to fill it up somehow, and then

I will decide what to do next.

The moon is bright on the lawn, reflecting off the

lake as I leave. I feel it shining off Tabitha’s cloak as

well, but I don’t care for the moment that this is the

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Folk Poetry & Story

least practical color for travel. It seems fitting, like taking with me a symbol of the swans we occasionally

were. Purest white with black shadows.

I leave the place where freedom was given to me and go to make it my own. If I become a swan again, it

will be with power I find myself. m

P:34

Elke Trittel

Up to My Neck

Ink drawing, collage on paper 15x15 cm

P:35

In the Night Forest

m

P:36

23

Night Forest

Did you know I whisper things to you

in the night when you are seized in a paralytic sleep

we are nights conquest in its negligee of fog

night that mimics our finality

Did we defy mortality long ago

with our little deaths

our delicious agonized finishes

I hover my face over you

to match my breathing to yours

and wonder of the course and variance

of your dreams as I whisper

let them commingle –these dreams–

in some recitation of our infirmities

–a weakness here a breakage acknowledged–

this is how night works its murderous ways

we are now with badly mended wings

but I will fly these hours with you

to where night takes us as its downdrafts

smash us to the ground

I whisper regrets with a crumpled face

I whisper love with ashen breath

I whisper lust with a kiss to you hand

and even as the grey dawn creeps

beyond the shuttered windows

and everything is stripped away

It is then we find ourselves new

and perfect again.

Gary Beaumier

I f N i g h t S o T o o t h e M o r n i n g

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Folk Poetry & Story

The old trees bend protectively around us

as we rest on the park bench in our winter wear

your faltering mind following

the course of the river

that is close and sure and deep

even now I can still find your younger face

and remember the pillowy softness

of your lips when ours first met

when we became love desperados

for now we will make our way to the bookstore by the famous church

and I will buy for you a neglected volume of stories

that will carry you into the long nights

and when we find a place to take coffee

you will caress the weave of the cover

as I serve your cup with an unsteady hand

and I see there is a little less of you this day

should we weight our overcoat pockets with rocks

and wade into the waters?

it will seem like the most natural thing

we will clutch each other and

let the current spin and dance us as our hats float free

if they find us washed up on some farther bank

will our lips be blue like something that burned pure

and is death just a river that will take us somewhere else?

for tonight though I will read to you to quell your agitations

–words you may still find familiar–

and in not too long a time

when I kiss you again

will you think it’s our first?

Gary Beaumier

The Complete History of Our First Kiss

P:38

25

Night Forest

Once there was a woman in the night forest

who could hear above the register of most.

She would listen to mice sing in chorus

or coyotes comfort their young

over the flash and rumble of coming weather.

There was the night when I stayed in the garden

late into the hours and you called for me

and together we watched the gods

toss stars across the sky and later

we returned to our bed and I watched you

over the vastness of our pillows

as your breathing fell into a rhythm

and you separated from me.

Have your dreams returned you to a wooded place,

dusted in moonlight, where you keen your ears

to other selves, selves beyond the register of my knowing?

Gary Beaumier

Night Forest

P:39

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Folk Poetry & Story

Under a dark bloom of cumulus

Dense concentrations of geese wander the sky

I have not been listening

I have not listened

traded all for a sugar high

There is the shushing of the ice

the waves bring to shore

and the sinewy wisps of steam

that skim the waters in the harbor

just before a west wind takes them

near the burning of the sun

There is the watch of the trees

in their slow deliberateness

in this season of long nights

It is not the world that ends in fire or ice

merely us

Gary Beaumier

Merely Us

P:40

27

Night Forest

Dreams mine a rich vein

unknown in the day’s glow

as last night reported his death

a second time

Dawn’s a thin membrane of light

and the sheared moon broods into the morning

I work the pathway alone with my dog

–whippet thin–

as he breaks through scrub to rupture my thoughts

We come to a pond with its skein of ice

but I think it has a repository of my dreams

threading through its darker waters

Later I will cast a line into it

when it has melted

and it will look as though I am fishing

but this day is set aside to let loss

hemorrhage into my wakefulness…again

Gary Beaumier

O n t h e S e c o n d O c c a s i o n o f H i s P a s s i n g

P:41

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Folk Poetry & Story

Gary Beaumier

T o t h e L i g h t h o u s e

The sun bounces off the water

waves toss jagged glints of light

as they break into a shrapnel of drops

against the limestone

the sea has punished the concrete

fortification leading to the lighthouse as a couple

dance step around tricky footing

she takes his arm scrimshawed with tattoo

you must not know the arch of your years to come

as you stand beneath the shadow

of this structure wrapped around each other

ready to laugh off any battering

maybe just know you’ll both be a light to the other

and that you must dance a little when you can

even near the killing sea

P:42

29

Night Forest

Somewhere mother holds you

against her breasts in a Chicago flat

–the war winding down–

while she warms a bottle

and tests the milk on the tender of her wrist;

“you are my sunshine,” she sings.

Somewhere you sit in a quilted coat

upon a tricycle in front of a red house,

and later still your fastball hisses over

home plate into the strike zone.

Somewhere a man says we all derive from stars,

while a holy person declares we will live forever.

You still succor your fractious babies as you pace a midnight floor.

Only just now a distant planet watches you bend to help a student

or soften your embrace to your wife in the utter dark.

Somehow you glide out of a fifth floor hospital room into a painted twilight,

into streams of cars and trucks and exhaust

as your family holds your emancipated body

and rides with you to the edge of life

and somewhere a medical student

peels back what remains of you

to learn the human clockwork.

Gary Beaumier

From Certain Distances In Space I Still See My Brother

P:43

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Folk Poetry & Story

Jerome Berglund

A H a i k u

Dominoes don’t know,

standing tall on their edges,

the fate that they tempt?

James Kotsybar

Matter of Perspective

lighted balconies

singing thumbing noses

at what comes ravenous

P:44

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Night Forest

Andi Talbot

A g o o d N i g h t ’ s S l e e p

You swore

I snored

I asked

are you sure?

Are you sure

I snored?

because honestly

I thought

that was the best

the best night’s sleep

I ever had.

H i - V i s

To the blonde punk girl

with the black cap

in the bus station,

wearing ripped blue jeans

and a half smile

To that very girl,

The blonde punk girl

In her hi-vis jacket

I would have noticed you anyway.

Running Low

We scour the kitchen for scraps

forage cupboards for crisps

find only tins without labels

best before dates can now

be stretched

soured milk is better than black coffee

P:45

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Folk Poetry & Story

Nagorno-Karabakh War:

May, 1988 - June, 1994

Death has a new face, a face

of a drunken, unshaved man;

red bulged eyes, bad breath,

strength, muddy boots, AK-47…

Begging for mercy–logs in the fire:

burn, baby, burn;

scream, woman, scream;

cry, old man, cry…

It’s all in the past now, in the memory

of our god-forsaken earth.

Afterword: July, 1994

In the street in front of a hotel

two children are playing;

a boy of five, rachitic,

and a girl with a toy pistol:

they are playing on a serious

note, and the little boy, rather

petulant and unwilling,

is told to stand up against

the piss-stained wall; he can’t

understand that he is then

supposed to fall down;

the girl shows him how–

with all the experience

of her seven years…

Lazarus Trubman

F a c e o f W A R

Lazarus Trubman

A F r o z e n M o m e n t

A wintry morning,

the ground covered in hoarfrost,

the sun a red bull behind a metallic

haze,

the brittle branches of the trees,

tender and graceful,

as if sketched in India ink on silk,

gray with a violet shimmer,

and beneath my shoes,

as I cross the brown field,

a sound as of breaking glass.

P:46

33

Night Forest

Frost flowers bloom at the feet

of white crownbeard, only

at the threshold of winter, before

the sap retreats to the roots.

The stalks exhale. Vapor

freezes to ribbons that curl

around pale stems

like bows of blown glass.

White in the morning grass,

the most fleeting of flowers

linger longest

in the deepest shade.

Agnes Vojta

Ephemeral

Agnes Vojta

T h o s e S w e e t S t i c k y S u m m e r N i g h t s

when everything is in bloom

are drenched in honeysuckle.

The moon hangs like a blood orange

above the river. The cicadas

compete with the guitar, the air

clings to our skin, and the night

is pregnant with desires

and misunderstandings.

- after a painting by Greg Edmondson

P:47

34

Folk Poetry & Story

I have not written

in such a long time,

there’s too much to say,

and I do not know

where to begin. So

let me just tell you

what I did today.

I fed the cat, sat

with my coffee cup

and watched the sun rise.

I went to the woods.

It was cold; I found

frost flowers at noon.

Above, the deep blue

Ozark winter sky.

I walked by the creek

to an old mill, little

more than a shack.

The water rushed

down red rhyolite rocks,

and the witch hazel

have started to bloom.

They smell so lovely.

I hope they are blooming

where you are, too.

Agnes Vojta

Letter from the Ozarks o n a S a t u r d a y i n J a n u a r y

P:48

35

Night Forest

There’s a land that always smells of mud and river and marsh. Where things that die are taken back

gratefully and easily into the earth, not some hardened prairie where the dead must wait until the frost

subsides to get a proper burial. It is there that Fomka lives with his mother, father, and brothers.

One this day the boys are hunting for rabbits and checking their snares. The oldest brother kills the

rabbit and the middle brother carries them over his shoulder. It will be little Fomka’s job to skin them when

they get home.

Fomka watches the lifeless rabbits bounce up and down on his brother’s shoulder. If not for their still

eyes, they might run away if he were to set them down on the grass. The older brother stops to survey

the hedgerow. He takes his rifle and aims for sport at the sparrows that are noisily discussing the day. He

shoots three times but brings down only one. They clamber over the hedgerow on their way back home.

“Won’t you take the sparrow?” Fomka asks.

His older brother laughs and says,“a sparrow is justs bones with not enough meat for soup.” Fomka lags

behind and pockets the still-warm sparrow.

That afternoon after the rabbits are skinned and in the pot, Fomka walks to the river’s edge. He doesn’t

understand killing something that is not for supper. He gathers the cattails and weaves a small mat. The fruit

of the cattail that will keep the raft afloat.

He places the sparrow on the raft and pushes it until it finds the current. He watches it until it rounds

the bend and is out of sight as the scent of night begins to replace the scent of the day.

The next morning Fomka sits in bed waiting for some sign that he should greet the grey day and finds

none. His mother hums as she knits in her rocking chair. She is convinced this baby will be a girl after all

the noisy boys.

Suddenly Fomka finds his reason to get out of bed. A sparrow sits on the window ledge, tapping on the

glass. Fomka thinks the sparrow must be fighting his reflection, but then he thinks he hears a wispy, fluted

voice saying his name. It couldn’t be his sparrow? He throws on his clothes and, without even stopping for

breakfast, heads outside. The sparrow leads him back to the river’s edge, then perches on his knee.

“Thank you, Fomka, for giving me back the life your brother took so readily. This gift will be bestowed

upon you two more times.”

The summer turned to fall, and the boys made themselves useful to their father. The wheat harvest grew

tall and waved grasshopper green. Then, suddenly, the wheat seemed to bleed red blood as though it had

been pricked by sharp teeth. The blood coagulated and sat on the stem of the sheaf. The boys had never

seen this before, and late at night, Fomka heard his father speak to his mother in a whisper.

“The rust will kill the whole crop. The boys will starve. I won’t be able to feed you, and you won’t be able

to feed the baby.” His mother tried to reassure him. “I’m sure it won’t come to that.”

But then the rust started spreading. Neighbors met, hats in hand, heads hung low. Fomka couldn’t bear

the thought of his baby sister suckling at an empty breast- crying. He took a shaft of murdered wheat to

Katie Sakanai

F o m k a

P:49

36

Folk Poetry & Story

the river. He wove the mat and sent it down the

river again, following it with his eyes, and it rose and

fell in the current. He went to bed hopeless but was

met with a bright, clear fall day and a sparrow at his

window.

When he walked outside to greet the sparrow,

it told him that the rust would stop its spread, and

the wheat crop would be saved. “The children of

this town will get to meet another winter thanks to

you, Fomka.”

Fomka felt reassured. He took time after a day’s

work to ride the horses and search for bullfrogs and

pop the jewelweed. His mother’s belly grew large as

the days grew colder. The harvest had been enough

to see them through the winter; they had nothing

to fear.

One cold December morning, his mother said,

“it’s time,” and sent the boys out to walk to the

neighbor’s house and her husband to fetch the

midwife. As he left, she kissed Fomka on the head

and promised he would love his new baby sister.

But Fomka did not love his new baby sister.

When they returned from the neighbor’s that

afternoon, she lay there blue and rigid, the cord

wrapped around her neck too tightly. His mother

lay dead grey and glassy-eyed. The midwife spoke to

his father in hushed tones and suggested the boys

say goodbye.

Fomka refused and sat next to his mother as hour

after hour went by. The older boys went outside in

their private sorrow, but Fomka would not move

from his mother’s side. His father pleaded and pulled

and finally gave up. He told Fomka he would get the

womenfolk to attend to the bodies and the wood

for the coffins and would return that evening. Fomka

was alone with his still-beautiful mother and the

dreadful baby. He knew what he had to do.

He fetched the wheelbarrow and dragged his

mother’s body from the bed to the barrow.

When he got to the riverside, he set about

weaving mats. A hard crust of ice at the edge looked

sharp enough to cut as he pulled her into the water.

No matter how many mats he wove and layered, it

was not enough to hold her weight. Tears streamed

down his face as his mother’s body sank softly into

the silty muck at the river’s edge. He held her neck

to keep her face aloft. Like the rabbits, he thought,

were it not for her blank stare, she could still be

alive. As if she could still wake up and walk from the

water, newly baptized. He stayed there holding her

until his body was wracked with shaking from the

cold, and the sun was setting dusky purple.

The sparrow came, alighting on a cat-tail.

“It is not nature’s way.”

Fomka was angry.

“I can save you, worthless sparrow, but not the

person dearest to me? I still have one gift left.”

“There is another you can save,”the sparrow

said, and with a jerk of his tail he flew away.

Fomka abandoned the husk of his mother. Why

save that wretch of a girl who took from him all

he loved? He wandered back to the house to look

at her. She was so small. Not much bigger than a

dove. When he got closer, he saw that she had his

mother’s straight black hair and dark black eyes.

Could he save this thing? Is that what his mother

would want? He unwrapped the cord and gingerly

touched her tiny, almost transparent fingers.

He carried her to the river wrapped in a blanket.

As he held her, he softened. This time he wove a raft

shaped like a canoe to shield her from the weather.

He kissed his mother one last time then the baby’s

forehead before he pushed her downstream.

Fomka went back to the house and packed a

rucksack with a few things, including the clothes his

mother knit for the little girl. All night he walked

alongside the river. He could see very little by the

light of the stars, but he walked until he saw the glow

of morning on the horizon. He came up to a rock

outcropping, and that’s where he heard her. Crying

with all her might. Angry and hungry. He picked her

up from the raft, dressed her, and quieted her. He

put her inside his jacket and walked home. He had

used his last gift, and now the two of them would

have to face the world together. The sparrow flitted

after him. m

P:50

Elke Trittel

“80 Miles Under the Sea”

Ink drawing, collage on paper 15 x 20 cm

P:51

Flash & Rumble

s

P:52

39

Night Forest

Fortuitous

is the word I like to use.

Then I smile.

I’ve written the story 56 times

and burned every version. With glee.

That boy was like a golden harp himself

and I knew I could play him.

I’d wanted my husband dead so long

I’d forgotten when I first wished it.

Maybe I could have just melted gold

to pour down his snoring gullet.

Maybe I could have plucked the goose

and forced feathers into his throat.

But if he’d woken? Another fist

to my face, kick to my aging ribs.

No, the boy was best.

Him and his hunger, his greed.

Once, twice, thrice he came.

I helped him feel confident, safe.

I was the one who whispered darkly

to the unplucked strings:

Sing now!

That bellow, that roar as the big oaf woke,

that fumbling long run to the stalk:

I hid my laughter, waiting, watching

for the gleam of that axe far below.

Katharyn Howd Machan

Clouds

P:53

40

Folk Poetry & Story

He lives to carry sweet warm pails,

no thought of green vines rising fast,

forbidden blue sky burning. Turning

one morning away from his home, he sees

a man like a face in a mirror, five

hard pale beans clutched in his fist,

a smile that could father a child. Wild

in his heart for the very first time, Jack trades

Milky White with a single nod. Odd

rumbles begin as clouds start to form

but he thinks only of the stranger’s words

that float behind him soft and bold:

gold, chicken, harp, my son,

all impossible giant dreams

for a boy alone with his mother’s love.

Katharyn Howd Machan

Jack

P:54

41

Night Forest

The Forest

Among crisp windows of pressed sugar,

licorice-button knobs, sweet drawers,

curving walls of honeyed ginger

she needed Gretel to make him grow,

that splendid boy with stone-filled pockets,

lingering fingers’ crusty crumbs.

Obedient Gretel cooked golden-plump

roosters, curried dumplings, shaped

spicy cutlets into deep-fried hearts,

smeared thighs with currant jelly.

Stuffing, stew broth, soups, pate:

every possible piece of flesh

magicked to succulence at her touch

in that dark kitchen’s perpetual heat

and Gretel dreaming of feathers–Oh!

and those bones she cunningly hid,

away from the stirring, away from the pot,

washed and patted beneath her apron,

safe from the Witch’s spider gaze

and appetite for a male grown large,

made ready for her by his sister.

Hansel

I remember the Witch.

Skinny fingers, eyes peering into mine,

pale-bellied insects at dawn.

Oh, she was queen of all

Katharyn Howd Machan

Gingerbread

my early hungers: sugar

milktongue, touch of silken honey,

every sweet my mouth could call for

and all with open door.

She knew I wanted more:

hidden jewels like cherry gumdrops,

pearls of purest white; against

those warm brown gingerbread walls,

what could I do but hunger?

The chicken bone, my silent tongue–

all play in time’s sure cunning.

If not for Gretel’s jealous hands,

I would have burned in her

dark oven, found the fire

evening brings: taste, taste

of stained-glass candy

answered prayers, desire’s wings.

Gretel

Why Hansel, Hansel, Hansel?

I wanted to eat, too,

gravies spiced with savory dill,

slices of beef with the fat still on,

rounds and curls and wands of pasta

warm and white with butter and cream.

Behind the shadowed cobweb cupboards

I knew rainbow gumdrops gleamed

embedded in hard walls like jewels

I’d fingered in my father’s dreams.

Dark chocolate stuffed with hazelnuts,

syruped squash so soft and dripping

P:55

42

Folk Poetry & Story

it melted to gold on a spoon.

The witch kissed me three times

a day, making sure my mouth

was free of foods I carried steaming

to the boy in the small black cage.

No blood for me, no milk, no sausage!

Just a few leaves of rampion, wilted,

my apron strings grown long and longer,

my hands cold bone, my chin a knife,

my eyes a kitchen oven’s deepest coals.

Witch

Eat

this house.

This honeycomb splendor,

these eaves

where gumdrop spiders spin.

I have boiled

dark caramel,

set rosy mints

just so.

On frosty panes

of sugarspun

you can write

your names

over and over and over

again in full moon’s

syrup light.

Sweet children,

all my days

I mix and stir

the shapes of dreams

night steals from me

alone:

hot stars, perfect

licorice crescents,

cinnamon jewels aglow.

If I could swallow them

my eyes would turn

to toad gaze,

spring’s free song.

Instead it’s you

whose tongues must flicker

in and out with delight.

This fire spits.

My iron spoon

grows heavy,

sears my flesh.

Can you count

the candied cherries

lined up in a row?

Taste them now

and the crystal drops

I pretend are tears.

Grow fat.

Uncage your fears

of who I really am.

Just once call me

Pure Dark Mother

before the oven slams.

P:56

43

Night Forest

Background voices whisper

dream sequences in broad daylight

I wish to spin my head like Linda Blair

see if the world behind exists

I put my hand through invisible black holes

that suck in spaces above my head

dance in Archimedean spirals through

make-believe walls make-believe floors

peopled with shadows to whom

I have given substance

Reality sways on the back burner.

A doorway opens to a topsy-turvy landscape

fun house platforms mind-bending parallels

a faint buzz from contemplating the end of the sky

only to be told the gods have a hologram credit card

shining reflective with a picture of my beliefs

in vanishing perspective towards an unknown

figure who stands on the edge of the road ahead

I reach out and hug my construct of a dog

Charlene Moskal

Now you see me, now you...

the driver who plows the car into the ocean

then tries to save whatever is left to save;

the actor, naked, panicked who can only

remember lines from the wrong playwright;

the teacher who wanders a labyrinth of halls,

looks for children in a bullet ridden classroom.

They’re always only you.

There is no one else there.

All the tilted cities that fall in on themselves,

slippery streets of rain damp cobblestone,

locked doors, darkened windows,

throngs of people who push against you

like salmon swimming upstream

as you strain to reach distant mountains,

it is always only you.

They are your shades, your frayed crazy quilt

whose seams are opened just enough

to spill out old stuffing,

make room for new batting

in a world where laughter is rare

and distorted voices mimic the past.

Static interrupts the message,

the receiver is damaged;

do not expect more than a broken screen

with pictures of half-truths

in colors that blow away like sand

from a mandala that has served its purpose.

It’s always only you

There is no one else there

It’s Always Only You...

P:57

44

Folk Poetry & Story

There are no expiration dates.

They are all there

perpetually confused in their spaces,

never listening, unseeing,

blind to the shade I have become.

They live in old houses with rooms

that empty into rooms

like mirrors set at angles,

A fun house of discomfort.

They speak in non-sequiturs

as I spin, ask for direction

while they tend to themselves,

ignore my need to get somewhere,

do something, see around a wall, find home.

Lost, I cannot define what I desire most.

There are vistas to cross;

to find a way over the river,

to get to mountains on the other side,

Their fingers point in all directions,

but offer no bridges, no maps,

no Charon to guide me across.

I reach a city in pre-dawn dreams;

houses fold in towards each other,

winding, narrow streets, New Amsterdam.

They have all gone.

I am alone, mired, wedged between

shadowed brick and empty windows.

There have always been labyrinths,

closed doors, dark stairways, basements,

elevators that lead to the forty-fifth floor

of a crumbling five story building.

Charlene Moskal

Then I Wonder

I wake with an urgency to remember

the visitors who inhabited me.

There is the encumbrance of time in dreams,

a dark shroud of distress, liquid smoked glass

accompany first conscious thoughts,

then I wonder what it would be like

to wake up laughing.

P:58

45

Night Forest

A message from the birch

furled at my door–

I cannot read

handwriting so thin

it blends in with the veins.

I am content to let it rest unread,

I, who once tried to discern

the secrets of the universe.

Gold finches

crack seeds above yellow lilies.

A gold bug glittering in the grass

catches my eye

but it spreads gilded wings

and disappears.

My gold wedding band

with its silver center

now scratched by years of use

still anchors me.

We follow separate paths

more often than before

laughing over the memory

of early times

when I would cry

at the separation

of sleep.

We share dreams

and children, now grown.

Their lives unwinding

like our own

to ends we cannot see.

The silver birch grows beyond our reach,

its messages ever peeling

and falling softly on the grass

still green.

Karen S. Henry

Birch bark

P:59

46

Folk Poetry & Story

A poem walks into a pandemic

and starts tearing up its lines

to make medical grade masks

tossing its punctuation

tiny prayers

darkening the emptiness

between its stanzas

with the names of the dead

until only its title remains

like a collapsed lung.

Candice Kelsey

like a collapsed lung

P:60

47

Night Forest

Some Notes on Genre

the poet and the fiction writer

swore that they swam with a manatee

out in the warm blue Gulf waters,

though no one else was around

to support their story,

we listened, rapt, in how

they saw its stone-like back

bob across the surface,

how they crept toward it

to get a better angle, despite

the waves that pushed them back

to shore and breakers

the poet boasted that he prevented

the fiction writer from running

his hands across its back,

citing nonfiction he had read

about the coat of the beast,

its health-giving slime,

the fiction writer admitted

his temptation recalling how those,

in ancient times, documented

mermaid sightings, how, at a distance,

the figure was alluring, but, when closer

the countenance was mannish

we listened, half-believing, half-doubting,

and the poet admitted that he was turning

into fiction and the fiction writer nodded

Eric Machan Howd

N o t e s o n G e n r e

P:61

48

Folk Poetry & Story

Why did I brave a tangled wall of thorn

to heed my true love’s curse and daily pains?

Her knotted form and burning brain still mourn

her past, the finger prick, and sharp blood drains

between us in the night. Her dragon bites

my romance clean in half. Her father long

ago succumbed to sleep. How many nights

have crossed her dreams in search of other song?

What drove my heart between such trembling hands?

She holds her nightmares close, like treasure, near

and tight and wraps her fury round our bands.

She spins insomnia into her fear.

One hundred fifteen suns, I recompose

the posture of the sleeping Briar-Rose.

Eric Machan Howd

C h a r m i n g ’ s L a m e n t

Those seven little men are in our bed

again and I cannot find words to tell

her why our marriage seems like it is dead;

her heart communes with them. The witch’s spell

is what’s to blame: they’re always in our lives,

and she indulges every need and more.

She spends her waking hours on them and strives

to make them happy and all that’s left for

me is huff and hassle, a spent Snow White.

If I could lose those bitty men, or boot

them from our door, I’d show her how a knight

can wake his damsel’s dreams, and more...it’s

moot.

I did not singly rescue her with kiss;

her tiny heroes share in that small bliss. Eric Machan Howd

Prince of Briar-Rose

P:62

49

Night Forest

veteran piano

unites

visionless girl

silence darkness

chords cords

music dance

fruit flower

bee dragon

eyelashes smiles

afternoon stillness

pain

joy

steel

voice

It exists, saves that apparently you are not, a distance

between the voice and the piano that we sold. The piano that

saves sounds does not know where that the buyer has

disciplined making him sing demonstrating that the music

(although you give your strings) I was still living in him.

It exists, saves that apparently you are not.

An unusual closeness between your vanished smile

And my pain made of reinforced steel, sublimated steel

The cloudy waves of the beach they bring you closer to

a memory that does not exist and I propagate bonze

schools.

They exist when I embrace your involuntary absence, the

poems never said, the repeated kisses without ever existing.

There is a return of eyelashes and smiles,

Vivian O’shaughnessy

B l i n d G i r l ’ s P i a n o P r o l o g u e

P:63

50

Folk Poetry & Story

a persecution of loneliness, a step just

for many unpublished passes, hidden in

the shoe

and in the shadow of the unpublished footprint, light air

flower, where the wind touches you is not afraid and confuses

us as one who fuses the bee and the dragon,

the rain with the tears, and the fraternity mixes in struggle

impact with metaphor, correlation with the separation that

follows flush of death.

Ravished from being born

I see very sweet guavas and opiates that resuscitate.

II

The piano we sold has distances inside, some blind girl

executes it, some cheerful girl to have piano, says her

father the buyer.

And we think of Brahms, Shostakovich and of Liszt.

And we thought to buy, after having lived and dying

on the verge of sound, the afternoon, reason for an old piano.

The substitute piano.

A divo appears who is looking for voices and veteran pianos, and we will say:

“is the piano born of class like that one,

hung on the guitar, we did not learn, because our teachers died and,

“they escaped, after the first notes of ancient Carlos Taylor

and Blas Carrasco, “and an infinite thirst for boleros.”.

Mocking laughs from a time without chords

It exists, now that briefly these, in a lapse that dies made respite, the

distance of a silent piano, to the joy of that blind girl. m

P:64

51

Night Forest

Vivian O’shaughnessy

Funky Sonnet

Why the barriers of life

When

Your

arms convey the unwritten

facial glow illuminates the heart

tongue engraves the soul

backside is a slab of manliness

touch ignites

glance is a beacon of being

Why must I

grope and stroke you to paradise

deposit kisses to moisturize

Your

impermeable facade

P:65

52

Folk Poetry & Story

I question myself, and a thought, upon seeing you, baptizes me in words.

In signs, in commas, in semi-colons, in ‘diaeresis’, in aurora borealis, in logos repeated. In

Andromeda full of commiserations.

I interrogate myself and prostrate, I question myself and sometimes the universes that give in the

pool of

Juancho, in my homeland, Villa Francia in bloom,

with fixed universes petals-perfume of some flower of childhood.

The flower you sent me, the flowery response.

It interrogates me and volcanoes emerge, characters in hovering, tired surnames, DNA.

divided that was your game saw.

I question myself and I look at you full of inexistence and charged with heaven, where the

‘egolatria’ has

dissolved and looks at me.

Then I interrogate myself. In the renegade ego.

What is the memory worth, chip from the past,

it will be what it has been.

Only sound from the dreams and sensitivity that indifference gives when

it becomes death.

(Achilles and his heel repopulated with fevers).

Agamemnon opening mazes.

The sistoles and diastoles in a fight to life that is a fight to the death,

and the sound keyboard of my computer distributing indolence:

the names, avocados, ‘carimbalas’, ‘estronico’, solitudes, whores from the backyard, saints

looking for altars devoid of sites.

Loneliness growing, I wonder, and only the literary gloom, the memories, the

delirious sword, the storms come back to me,

and push what has been,

And they attack everything I have been. m

Vivian O’shaughnessy

The Interrogation

P:66

53

Night Forest

Katharyn Howd Machan

P e n e l o p e

and gradually as with one mind

began to shun the room where I sat weaving.

They sensed the presence there

of some new spirit—a calmness

in my smile, a way I had of gazing

at their leering faces unperturbed—

that disconcerted them, sent them away

muttering that something was amiss.

They couldn’t read my loom,

saw nothing there but colors

meeting in confusion, if they looked at all.

So it went on. Years passed. I grew

older with the women, and together

we taught their daughters how to weave.

A hundred eager hands reached for the threads

and they surpassed my art so far

that I sat back in gladness knowing

silence would never still the air again.

It was that gladness, not time,

that drove the suitors wild

to claim me, shouting “Choose! Choose!”

And I would have chosen—to save us—

despite my son—had not Odysseus returned.

When he slipped into the hall in rags

and strung the bow, already I

loved him again, willed his success, welcomed

night embraces in the great carved bed.

So, loving, we continue.

And mornings, loving,

every loom a tree of light,

I weave again with the daughters around me,

fingers sure in time’s glad reach,

learning from them now, faithful

to the green and golden stories

that celebrate our love.

The world remembers me for loving him:

sleeping chaste in Ithaca, my heart firm

as the living tree he carved for our bed.

Good Penelope! Faithful and cunning wife

to fool with woof and warp

the suitors who would claim

all that Odysseus left behind.

But a woman doesn’t love a man

gone eighteen years, patience be damned!

I learned to love myself and lived

alone, as some might call it, manless,

supposed to weep and dream of his return.

Return? I knew that someday he might find

his way back home, that I’d be here;

yet in the interim there was no loving him,

for love is deeds, not thoughts and feelings

fluttering through the brain and blood.

What I wove on my loom I wove for me.

I dedicated every story in my threads

to bold Arachne, to all women brave enough

to spin the truth of history. At night

I smiled to hear the green and golden song

of growing skeins as I unraveled

images for the next day’s telling.

Alone? When imagination looked toward dawn

as toward a secret tryst? When hands

grew daily stronger and more sure

that what they wove was powerful?

My stories broke the silence of the air

around the house, around the women

who watched them with a serious delight

and turned to one another, their eyes bright

with recognition, daring yes.

The suitors grew uneasy, called for wine,

insisted that the women dance for them,

after Adrienne Rich

P:67

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Folk Poetry & Story

They say it was my face. No:

let me tell you about marriage.

Silences and swords, a stone house,

my women whispering around me

dull as bees. For years before he touched

our doorsill, I dreamt his voice;

the silver gifts he brought were tiny

mirrors of the girl I’d held inside

too long. Soon I turned willing hands

to weave for him, each thread a piece

of secret song. The peacock blue, the purple

heart of pansies, red a cry of sun

setting over unclimbed hills. I asked

to go with him. I knew he watched

me walk across cool tile, my feet

in sandals I yearned to kick away

so I could run to him unbound

by safe convention. Strange strong guest,

reluctant to offend the man he knew

I didn’t love, whose hospitality

was heartless, rote, a hand that drops

coins in a beggar’s cup without a glance.

One morning when the sun rose white

and helplessly again I moved to stand

beside him where the swans swim slow,

he took my hand in his and nodded yes.

All time burst to blossom and I

knew what it was to be the rose.

Swift ships, sting of salty air, my hair

wrapped around his fingers in the dark:

we could have lived forever in that place

of travel, seabirds wailing overhead,

the men around us eyeing me like some

pure stolen chance—how could they know?—and my

hopes free as any muscled gleaming fish

leaping higher than those blue and bitter waves.

Again her jeweled hair soft

and bright, her lover’s promise:

True is all my words can know.

I remember her in sandals

gleaming on blue stone, her feet

a sure perfection walking

towards my waiting arms. Love,

how long I’ve waited for you

in this castle of closed doors.

We moved through dawn like light

through watered silk, her hands

strong and easy as she spoke.

See, here is where the swans

make nests, their wings a silent

home for small bright eyes.

She wanted me, I tell you;

all her days were made of dreams

of what could be. And I?

Mad adorer, midnight in my eyes.

Our first kiss held all my life

in question, and the answer

tumbled hard and fast toward death.

How a tongue can be a sword

swift and sharp to the heart:

Take me with you, my beloved.

We’ll disappear like rain

Helen And Leda was the mother

of two sisters: Helen,

prize for Paris when he declared

Aphrodite the most beautiful

and gave her the gilt apple...

Paris

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Night Forest

Only in the stream of thinking and life do words have their meaning

~Ludwig Wittgenstein

Wandering through the concrete byways of the city of Boetia, the girl tried to decipher the hidden

surprises of the urban landscape. In the midst of the eternal broadcast over the ubiquitous speakers,

it was almost impossible for her to find a steady thought and see beyond the blaring truth. Broadcast

words were as necessary to the people of Boetia as air. The moment they stopped flowing, they gasped for more.

People pretended to fall into conversation and were pleased to repeat the faultless and sure replies of

the broadcast. If Tiresias News’ voices agreed, the day was bound to be fruitful. When voices of discord

shook the air, cases of domestic violence rose behind locked doors, and pets were abandoned. As she

rounded an abandoned building along the river, Echo smiled as the broadcast seemed nothing more than a

droning insect in the autumn breeze at sunset.

Drops of rancid water from the concrete ceiling sounded like a drowned cello playing a doleful lament.

Echo walked along the crumpled tarps and pockmarked bed mattresses, the broken liquor bottles, and

amphetamine graffiti, and heard nothing but the wordless chorus of decay. Invasive trees poked through the

concrete while a speaker from years before dangled from the ceiling, cracked and cold. When a scurrying

rat drew her attention towards another corner of the ruins, Echo saw what looked like a small fire obscured

by a blanketed figure rocking back and forth.

As she approached, the fire became a small television, and Tiresias News was playing. A slight ringing was

coming from the device, but no other sound. Only the large subtitles below the news anchors appeared like

billboards at the bottom of the screen. The blanketed figure quickly turned, and Echo gasped. A toothless

old man was smiling as he pointed to the little screen. Without looking, he mouthed the words to Echo

just as they appeared on the screen.

A shrill laugh coupled with a slithering tongue insinuating something lascivious to the girl sent her

running through the detritus. Echo glanced at her own fleeing figure on the wall, a manic shadow puppet in

the light of the old man’s broadcast.

(Broadcast Speaker)

‘It’s 1900 hours, and this is Thrush Talk, THRUSH

…and I repeat that compassion is no substitute for truth.

No nation, especially Boetia, ever hugged itself into prosperity.

Oh! And as for those neo-whatever spinsters….

Feminism was established to allow unattractive nymphs easier access to power,

And as for the half-breed centaurs from beyond OUR borders, they can—‘

Several times a day, Echo vowed to go beyond the soothing feel of a Q-tip in her ear and poke herself

Hayden Moore

Briefest Use

P:69

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Folk Poetry & Story

into deafness. But she knew the pervasive nature of

words.

Tiresias himself was blind, and a destitute deaf man

had just shown her the truth. Blind and deaf, no

matter, the words were as penetrating as the virus

that almost ended Boetia a few years before. Fear

had many tongues, and they all spoke through the

chaos, even to the dead.

In the midst of her reverie, Echo failed to notice a

woman turning the corner of the Seer District of

Boetia. For once, the girl prayed to the gods that

the broadcast would grow louder.

“Echo!” The older woman said, the peacock

feathers in her hat glistening in the breeze.

“Oh!” Echo cried, jumping a step back.

“Always so jumpy. Just like a centaur, ha ha! So

sorry about your parents. Horrible thing. Haven’t

seen you since it happened. Two years? Where have

you been? No, really, I would love to give you a hug.”

“A hug?”

“Yes! It’s been so long.”

“So long,” Echo muttered, turning to walk away.

“But hugs are for the weak,” she cried, grabbing

Echo’s arm. “We can’t just hug ourselves into

prosper…prospero…what is that word? I just heard

it. Prosp—“

“Prosperity.”

“Yes! I took you for one of those Neo-something

or others. But you’re so pretty. Not unattractive

like those half-breed spin—“

“Spin!” Echo said through gritted teeth, pulling

away from the woman’s grip.

“What?”

“SPIN!!!” Echo screamed above the broadcast.

“What in Zeus’ name is wrong with—”

Echo pulled the peacock hat from the woman’s

head and flung it into the street. Before the hatless

woman could turn around, it was crushed by a

sanitation truck. Echo took to her heels again, her

boots barely keeping up with her feet.

(Broadcast)

‘It’s 1930 hours, and this is Breaking News:

Reports of a border war have been confirmed,

The Others failed to find the peace accord of

Boetia enough,

Witnesses confirm spinsters have joined

Centaurs in arms,

But blame for the plague on the horse-people of

the genus Equus are true,

Scientists note their habits and genetics are to

blame’

In other news…’

Echo tried not to vomit when she passed a playbill

touting another sold-out season of Orphan Annie.

The eyeless, two-dimensional redhead failed to sing

a song of consolation and hope after she spit on

her framed depiction. Untangling bits of her own

red hair, she sauntered through the Multi-Media

District, where Broadcast Theaters doubled as

places of worship. The bits of mica in the sidewalk

glistened in the fluorescent lighting of yet another

theatre entrance. Crowds of people sang the same

old songs as they left the theatre, their ears adjusting

to the Siren call of the broadcast.

“It’s him! Oh, my gods! It’s really him!”

“It is him!”

“Come this way!”

“Is he here?”

“Come over here!”

“Why run away?”

Echo had to turn around when she felt the

commotion, in spite of the usual repetition she

heard. In the midst of cameras flashing and people

weeping, a hunchbacked old man walked onto the

street. Through manic arms akimbo and kicking

legs of worshipers, Echo noticed a cane made of

intertwined serpents that hissed every time it struck

the pavement. When she saw the profile of Tiresias,

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Night Forest

she started laughing. At first, only a few worshipers

hushed her. But as Echo lost all regard for anything

but her private joy, the crowd of worshipers turned

savage in eye and tongue.

“It’s Orphan Annie!”

“No, it’s not. She has eyes!”

“Let’s pluck ‘em out and call her—“

“Call her to Thrush! He’ll deal with her!”

“But True Tiresias is here! His faultless and sure reply

is known far and wide!”

“Yeah! Even to the beasts with hooves!”

As the mob began to advance on Echo, she felt like

her feet were paved into the sidewalk. But a hissing

sound hushed the crowd, and the old man parted

them. As the beady red eyes of the serpentine cane

glared at Echo, she took a deep breath and stopped

biting her tongue. The only thing she sensed as

Tiresias approached was the faint taste of iron.

“Cruel are the times when the young are forced

into silence,” Tiresias said, advancing a little closer

to Echo.

“Silence?” Echo laughed softly.

“Ah, she speaks. Good,” Tiresias smiled, calming

the crowd with his skeletal hand. “But can she say

anything for herself?”

“Anything, anything, anything, anything for myself,

myself, MY SELF!” She yelled, leaning towards

Tiresias.

“Well—“

“Well,” she mocked. “Tell me something, Truth.

Tell me a secret. Anything. What did you dream

about last night?” Echo said.

“Dreams are what beasts revert to when they

cannot think for themselves.”

“Prove to me you’re not just a voice in a body. Give

me something saucy like blood. Something messy

that hurts.”

“If striking my serpents gave me the power to be

this, then it will give me the power to change you,”

Tiresias said.

“Prove it,” Echo smiled.

“By the power of Thrush and his father Zeus, I

transform you!” Tiresias screamed to the heavens,

striking his cane on the pavement. Silence. “I say

again, you gods of truth and justice!” He bellowed,

as he struck the pavement with his cane again.

Nothing.

“She’s bewitched Tiresias!” A man from the crowd

cried.

“No!” Tiresias chuckled. “I prophesied this years

ago. Watch,” he glared, pulling the serpent headed

grip from his cane loose and revealing a gleaming

blade.

“Holy shit!” Echo gasped, dodging a thrust by the

old man.

“Stay still for the prophecy!” Tiresias grunted,

taking another stab.

Echo watched as time slowed down for herself and

for the geriatric man even more as his second thrust

sent him tumbling head first onto the sparkling

pavement. The head of the blade hissed when it

struck the concrete. Only the broadcast from the

speakers echoed down the street as the point of

the blade pointed obliquely at the dark sky through

the dead man’s back. His spare body quivered a

bit beneath his black suit before a pool of blood

smothered the mica-infested pavement.

(Siren before Broadcast)

‘It’s 2100 hours, and this is Breaking News:

Rumors of the death of Tiresias are false,

A man resembling Tiresias was murdered in the

Multi-Media District,

Be on the lookout for a girl resembling Orphan

Annie but with eyes,

Words of consolation from Tiresias himself to

follow this advertisement:

P:71

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Folk Poetry & Story

BOETIA’FIL’A IS THE BEST FRIED CHICKEN IN TOWN,

OPEN EVERYDAY BUT SUNDAY’

By the time the corpse stopped twitching and the crowd managed to find the words, Echo was already

heading back towards the river. Across the wide waters that led to the sea, she knew where the quick-eyed

Centaurs and the free-willed women lived and breathed the air that held words of their own making. Echo

searched for her own words she would use to relate the story of her success. But the briefest use of words

would be enough when her eyes told the truth. For the first time in her life, she was proud of her red hair

and endless tangles, a natural device to hide in plain sight. As the broadcast became a hum and that hum

was displaced by crickets, Echo dove into the water and swam bootless back to her people. s

P:72

Elke Trittel

New Rules New Games

Ink drawing collage 15 x 15 cm

P:73

Dreams Returned

m

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Night Forest

i’m digging for poems in my garden

because i’ve looked everywhere else.

you can come with me and dig too

Purpose tells us what is what was what will be,

who she is, who she was, and who she will be

sometimes we tell our students

“is” is the

weakest verb

–but is it?

because what will be is maybe

who we are–is maybe

who we could be

isn’t half a poem what is

–a simile–like or as?

i’m digging in my garden for the is-ses

and was-es and will-be’s,

and i’m pulling up weeds

of silence, weeds of doubt

words that never worked out

and if only i dig deep enough

i could find a poem

to sing to you

Polly Alice

Night Garden Cantos iii ~it’s night

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Folk Poetry & Story

Polly Alice

Come to the Night Garden

–––

So, come. Because there’s

enough wind

from these slammed doors–

to blow us away

They’re enough clinks

from these locked bars–

to make ourselves

a rake and shovel

–––

We’ll dig a garden here

and with all the dashes

every teacher told us not to use

between so many phrases–

I’m going to make a sweet little path

-----------------------------------------------

---and you can come too. Come

out here with me in the night garden.

where I’ll teach you to

( ) speak fluent night flower

( ) interpret the winks of the moon

( ) have a taste for words that root in the dark

- - - - -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- - - - -

Come to the Night Garden

all you need is here.

Listen to earth buzz,

bend to meet the dusk of twilight’s

last cingant kiss,

Steel yourself for the cold crush

of a star’s smile

refracting dewdrop style.

Come to the Night Garden

where we can mend together–

divide our sorrows into rows

and wait for new things to grow–

It doesn’t matter what we bury here,

bodies or bones, bread, or baskets,

tares or tears,

we have until the wind chimes. Yeah,

we have until chimes.

P:76

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Night Forest

A number of the frogs she kissed

became princes; kissing other lips,

remembering hers, they woke and lisped.

Asleep, they dreamt the stars were eyes,

never blinking at their old lies:

waiting the loveless into wise.

So the world has ever turned:

ignorant, or feckless spurned,

love requites itself, and burns

Gene Fendt

The frog-prince, after

I meet new birds along the bay.

When I tell you, you ask me their names

as though I had been properly introduced,

not the interloper interrupting their daily hunt.

Being where I don’t belong is not new,

though I’ve never been to this bayside

retreat before. I’ve come to understand it

as a gift—not being an outsider—that happens

to everyone—but not expecting to belong.

Like meeting three new birds on a crisp winter

walk along a still blue bay, knowing you are out

of place makes every day an adventure.

Beth Gulley

I Meet New Birds Along the Bay

Beth Gulley

And then he tweeted...

See it’s not that bad.

I mean, the city is burning

but listen to how good

I can fiddle.

P:77

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Folk Poetry & Story

It was the worst pet we ever had.

My children got burnt when they tried to stroke it.

It ignited rugs, singed curtains,

tripped out smoke alarms.

One year we moved eight times

neighbours whipped up petitions,

an angry mob, armed with pitchforks, chased us out of town

You get the idea. Yes, that bird was trouble, a pest

although, admittedly, handy at summer BBQs,

or that time when the boiler broke, but

that was never quite enough.

Eventually, I had to turn the garden hose its way

as every time it came alive again

popped smugly from the ashes of itself

flaunted its extravagant plumage

it was just as cocky as before, just as sure of itself

aware of its own beauty, immortality, of all that we

did not, would never, have.

The Phoenix

Last winter at the Seattle Zoo

I saw an oversized chimp, forty feet up

balanced

on a flimsy dead branch

with just a toehold against the void

as it stared with an intense concentration

into the far distance

pissed in my general direction,

dismissed the possibility of falling, death.

I have faced towards the void myself.

But, I, was humbled by it.

Later that same day the void came back.

This time in its Monster Truck.

It ran itself backwards, forward, over me

as I lay drunkenly defeated.

The last thing I spotted before I blacked out

was a pair of hairy hands at the wheel

a non-opposable thumbs-up.

Alan Hill

T h e C h i m p a n z e e

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Night Forest

When the cat got sick

he burnt through our Hawaii fund, emptied my wallet.

There was no price I would not have paid.

In fact, I paid more

than the price of a child’s education, immunisation, in

a developing country

or a simple operation to bring back somebodies’ sight.

Then those hours online, researching causes, treatments.

I worried more about him, than if my kids had been ill.

These are all facts that did, somewhat, concern me

as I am sure that is what psychopaths do

bond with animals more than humans

Perhaps Oscar will start to talk to me in the voice of god

instruct me to kill strangers, reward me with candy, lights.

He has beaten death,

beaten it once, for a little while, but that is enough.

He is my hero now. I will let him eat all that he wants.

No diets anymore, I will let him get fat

then I will saddle him

my children and I will ride him as our feline stallion

over the mountains

into the eternity, where the sun hits the sky,

away from this messy, inadequate, thing called love

the greedy beast of it, the stupidly, grace of it.

Alan Hill

The Housecat

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Folk Poetry & Story

I wrote the stage for you. The floor. The curtains. I wrote for you a set. Table and chairs. An

ottoman. The windows of the house were open. You moved your swift hand. Shutters blew across

the yard. The wind transported cows and horses half a mile. The barn as if a gum eraser passed over

it. I wrote for you transitions. The church was left half standing. The steeple hanged like a broken

mast. Boards were found a mile to the north. In the churchyard the dead stayed in their storm

shelters. What wild band-music of weather. What game event. The blowing away of everything. The

clearing of the deck. I left a book of literary techniques for you— Segment. Fragment. Truncate.

Decollate. I gave you stage directions. The characters moved from one end to the other. I described

the theme for you. I gave you plot. You glued one star back onto the sky. The quarter moon was left

tilted. I gave you the subtext. From that you could deduct the text. Water is hardest to handle on

stage. It is the highest form of art.

Diane Glancy

The Game Event

From Lake Winnemucca I drove I-80 down the rust-orange mountains into Reno. At the Reno Train

Station where I had fallen down the steps of the train as a child I walked downstairs to see again not

since a child carried through the station blood on my dress the mountain lion still on the tracks.

Diane Glancy

National Register of Historic Places

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Night Forest

There were petroglyphs at Lake Winnemucca. Strange diamond-shaped marks

etched deeply into the rock. Flames, you said, though everyone else considered

them a mystery. There were marks of a pine tree after a fire— just a line for the

trunk with a few perpendicular, scraggly branches after the burn.

You wanted your ashes at Lake Winnemucca. With rain they would sink into the

ground with ancient ashes buried there.

Nothing at the lake bed but the quietness. Nothing— but the sound of my

footsteps in the sand and gravel as I walked to the car on the shore of the empty

lake.

Diane Glancy

I Could Face the Bare Pages

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Folk Poetry & Story

The storm woman slams her face against my window. Her rainy tears blowback to shore

where her grimy fingers claw the rocky shore, raking rocks, churning agates, tumbling grit

under her fingernails. Inside, the squeal of the Amazon Basics cross-cut shredder rips old

bills, pay stubs, and bank accounts into 3/16 by 1-27/32 inch strips.

the shredder burns hot

a vapor of marriage lost

the scorned storm yields

Barbara Meier

S t o r m W o m a n

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Night Forest

Memory stands in to fill a hole

where he used to be.

My empty palm is a cavity.

It’s not like there was

always something to fill it,

but when filled it would warm me.

Without a hand in that small space

I am always cold.

Charlene Moskal

Cavity

She continued to wear the band

even as the circle turned her skin,

at the confluence of palm and digit,

the blue-green of their honeymooned Aegean,

to daily remind her of the fickleness of love.

.

Charlene Moskal

Blue-green

Blue dyes my skin so that a clear sky

becomes camouflage. I’m like

an indigo bunting circling its mate.

I will blue toward my old first love,

brush his neck with secret blue

until his yellow sun remembers me

and together we are green again.

Dellabough Robin

Color Craft

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Folk Poetry & Story

last night

im cleanin out my

howard johnsons ladies room

when all of a sudden

up pops this frog

musta come from the sewer

swimmin aroun an tryin ta

climb up the sida the bowl

so i goes ta flushm down

but sohelpmegod he starts talkin

bout a golden ball

an how i can be a princess

me a princesswell my mouth drops

all the way to the floor

an he says

kiss me just kiss meonce on the nose

well i screams

ya little green pervert

an i hitsm with my mop

an has ta flush

the toilet down three times

me

a princess

Katharyn Howd Machan

Hazel Tells LaVerne Learning to Lie, the Nice Girl

says she found the flowers herself

right next to the path in a sudden patch

of sunlight between the high dark trees

that pointed the way to Granny’s

she tells how they fit all orange and blue

between the sweet cakes and bottle of wine

her mother’d packed neatly in the curved basket

that just fit over her arm

she doesn’t tell anyone of the wolf

who dallied with her on the soft crimson cape

before she stuffed it down his throat

and sat there watching him die

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Night Forest

You know the story where the boy

gets a piece of glass in his

eye from a dark mirror

that’s ever after shattered.

Kidnapped by someone colder than

pure ice. He leaves his

family, lost to them?

I used to think the girl

in the story was a hero–

taking the journey barefoot

to save her best friend.

She battles cold, hunger,

starvation, thieves, witches

until she finds the boy.

Nothing will save him

till a single

tear melts his heart

washing out the evil

shard– so he can see again. I used

to think she was a hero

but it happens every day. Every day

another one is given a dark glass.

I’m Gerda. What the storyteller forgot?

When someone you love

can’t see you anymore because

everything is distorted, cracked,

you begin to believe the cascade.

You think the black ice knows

the real you. What the story doesn’t tell you

is that you are not sure what to believe

anymore. What the story doesn’t tell

you is how hard it is to remember

or believe life before the looking

glass slit all hope–before monsters

were the only trope.

Yes, Gerda took years to find her

friend scaling the northern world.

Who was there to rescue and help her?

Enemies. Even enemies helped

her–witches and thieves, her anger, a bear,

the small memory that once there was

something good worth saving

something called a rose and she

grabbed each thorn on the way up.

When you have lost your best friend

and there is no one to tell. When you traveled

for years and you find him

only to have him lost again. You feel like

the mirror has won and no love

can unbreak your heart no tears

will save you now

Cold. You’re so cold.

Your feet won’t walk further, your

boots are lost, your sled stopped high

in the mountains. In this version–

you may not be the rescuer, you

may not be the mountain climber,

you may not outwit the traps

to root you in place and make

your feet forget how to dance.

But when you get there into

that cave. Love anyway.

When you get there into

that cave. Love anyway.

Polly Alice

Gerda & the Snow Queen

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Folk Poetry & Story

So, you think you’ve lost

everything but you’re wrong–

here I am. Just look at me!

I’m the cat you’ve overlooked

from the start. The one who

stayed by your side

when ol’ man

didn’t think you were smart enough.

So what if you don’t

have a great education, I never

got any school.

So you don’t have well… anything,

a farthing to your name.

Look at me, I’m not allowed

to own anything.

So your rat of a brother kicked

you out of your dad’s old place.

So you’ve got only the shift on your back.

So you haven’t had breakfast.

Look at me, I’m skin and

bones. I get scraps to eat.

Look at my paws, I’m barefoot.

You. You. have boots

And boots make the man.

Well, aren’t ya a man, or are ya?

Look at me, the only thing you own.

I can’t leave but you

can go anywhere,

do anything, talk to anyone.

God, If I were a man, I’d

make it work. I’d have

a new job, a new name,

and a wardrobe to match.

I’d have people offering

me everything …

–give me your boots. That’s

right. Take ‘em off.

Give me your boots.

I’ll fix everything.

Just promise me.

Promise me,

you won’t forget

who saved your skin.

Polly Alice

Puss ‘N Boots

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Night Forest

Girl Who Cried Man

Moving to a new city, I take wine to distant friends' houses,

wear backless dresses, wander from the path, meet strangers.

Man: What nice lips you have.

Girl: The better to kiss you with.

Days discovering each other, each unspoken desire

and untamed appetite brought to name. He asks me

not to wear that when we go out. Anything for this game.

Girl: What big arms you have.

Man: The better to hold you with.

Fist sized holes in the wall we hang paintings over,

tell the neighbors we are loudly dancing, what joy

they hear. Peonies on the table, the guests can taste it

in the puttanesca, they can see it in the way his hand

rests on the back of my neck. Love.

Wolf: What a big appetite you have.

Girl: The better to hunger with.

With unbrushed hair and bare feet outside

on the porch in the dead of winter because

it's too loud in the house. I’m starving but I’m feeding.

Giving all the food to both wolves- the good and bad in him.

I am the girl who cried man.

Jaidyanne Podsobinski,

The Girl Who Cried Man

P:87

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Folk Poetry & Story

It wasn’t love at first sight, no.

It took me years,

struggling, fearsome years,

to fall in love with myself.

First, I fell in love with my eyes.

After much staring in the mirror,

their broken emerald melted

and I could swim, dive, twirl

in their turquoise waters,

riding swift, golden fish.

Then my hands.

Long, fine fingers—the hands of an artist,

shaping the rebellion of my breasts

—two frightened doves,

ready to fly.

My hair unfolded next.

How hard to fix those tangled sun rays.

Now they wave on my shoulders,

autumn maple leaves on a tree.

My legs were easy to cherish—

long, perfectly muscled.

What a joy to break from the shade,

like a deer.

The rest followed freely

in the cortege of love.

Egyptian neck,

nothing to envy in Nefertari.

Persian lips—plump, soft,

ready to kiss and be kissed,

down to my Greek goddess toes.

My nose took me years

to fall in love with.

When will those freckles melt,

like cranes into the sunset?

“How about me?” my brain asked.

A golden dragon, hiding

behind octopus arms.

“Ride me,” he said, spitting fire.

“You’re the one in charge.

Don’t let me wander

in the dark forests of your mind.”

The last one in line was my belly.

“Accept me,” she said.

“Don’t pretend I’m not here.”

“I can see you, don’t worry.”

I petted her, softly—

a smooth cat sleeping in moon shape.

It wasn’t love at first sight, no.

It took me years before I heard

my first, whispering, shy—

I love me.

Adriana Morgan

Falling In Love

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She called me,

Told me her keys were gone

Swept up far below her,

Headed to the water treatment plant.

She was flustered,

But she dealt with it

After very few words.

All as usual.

Nine keys and a blue bottle opener she had to

replace,

And she did

Without a fuss.

But to this day

The set is incomplete

For as she sprints from one class, task, chore

to the next,

Only a breath of sleep,

Each new key wrestles,

Day after day,

Not on a ring

But in a plastic bag,

Forever lost among the stale crumbs

And capless pens

In the bottom of her backpack.

She says it’s good enough.

On Thanksgiving day

She meets me in the driveway

And offers me a tour inside.

It’s her father’s house,

But he is nowhere around.

Even today he is working the field.

He has not seen her in one year.

She is upset—

Disappointed.

Still she says nothing of it as she guides me

around.

I’ve never seen his house before.

There is the living room,

The kitchen—

Twice the size of my apartment—

And the master bedroom.

A car-length bathtub is fit up against two walls,

And clutched by the adjacent corner is the

shower,

Tucked behind a stone partition of jewelry

And a thick purple curtain.

“You gotta see this shower,”

She says, drawing the fabric.

Larger than even the tub.

She cuts me off before I can gasp—

“It’s broken, though.

He won’t fix it.

Says he’s too busy.”

Words scurry off an acidic tongue.

“Where does he shower then?”

She leads me to the moldy, cubic-foot stall

In the back of the house.

He says it’s good enough.

Half-fixed, half-happy, too busy to look in the

mirror and find only each other.

Hope Houtwed

The Plastic Bag & The Shower Stall

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My neighbor, who is always perfectly groomed,

has never invited me into her home,

still we are friends,

we meet almost daily on the sidewalk:

she leaving for work, me outside pulling weeds.

My neighbor, when she sees me working in the yard,

crosses the street and greets me with a warm hug. If

she has time, she shares a story about her workmates,

and we laugh.

When I ring her bell, to bring her mis-delivered

mail, my neighbor steps onto her porch,

barring the way into her private world,

still she brings me gifts: pecan pies

baked in aluminum pans, still warm from the

oven, smelling of sugar and molasses.

When my husband dies, leaving me with empty chairs,

my neighbor, who has lived across the street for ten years,

comforts me, lets me cry in her arms,

there in the street, until there are no tears left.

My neighbor who has never opened her door to

me, rings my doorbell, hands me a sympathy card.

We sit in my living room and talk quietly

about my husband. I tell her about his

illness. She listens and nods.

My neighbor, into whose house I have never

stepped, is moving, she waves a quick goodbye

without sharing her new address.

Louise Moises

Sidewalk Friendship

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They buried her alive for the good of the parish, but she did not go under the dark earth without struggle.

She snarled until her mouth frothed, white flecks spitting across the overturned soil, fighting with such

furious zeal it took three men in total to hold her, pry her jaws open, and stuff poisonous roadside weeds

down her throat.

She choked.

But even the heavy settling of hemlock paralysis couldn’t quiet her anger. She bared her teeth to the very

end as spadeful after spadeful of dirt was pitched across her long black coat. The night itself died in her eyes

by degrees. Rage was her lullaby unto death.

“Not lightly does life give up its hold,” the reverend said softly as if offering a prayer of gratitude to the

black dog whose sacrifice would forevermore protect his new church and its flock.

One of the men raised his mud-blackened hands—shaking—to his face. A cry broke out of him.

The reverend crossed himself, and the Latin verses he thereafter intoned echoed across the suffocating

grey blur that distinguished living from dying.

Centuries have worn away belief, as they have worn at the inscriptions of old gravestones, leaving the

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church grim little more than an old wives’ tale drowning in a world flooded with reason. Only a handful of

the parish’s youngest and oldest still take any stock in their grim.

The white-haired elders were baptized, taught, and married in this centuries-old church, with dozens

of mournful wakes scattered between every glimmer of celebration. They dare not shun any guardians of

death now, in their waning twilight years. Still, they warn their grandchildren and great-grandchildren that

the grim is not a beast of kindness but a beast of vengeance. It’s dangerous. It belongs to God, but not by

choice. It stirs storms across the county, raising high winds with its howls, wreaking lightning across the

sky with its claws.

“The grim eats lost souls,” they tell their babe-faced companions in the pews. “If you’re a true child of

Jesus, the grim has no choice but to spare you. But if you’ve even a glint of evil in your heart—the smallest

of shadows!—the grim will tear your soul to shreds and drag the remains of it to Hell.”

The grandchildren and great-grandchildren relish their sanctified ghost story. During the stretching

boredom of long Sunday sermons, they murmur rumors about the ghostly dog who prowls the churchyard.

“The grim rings the funeral bells!”

“The grim can spit fire!”

“The grim sleeps under the floorboards!”

With strangled squeals of joyful terror, they lift their Sunday shoes from the antique wood, eyeing the

knotted holes as if they might be dog snouts sniffing out the evil in them. They scan the old rafters above,

gazing with dark wonder toward the bell tower.

Hayli McClain

Good Gal

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“Where does the grim sleep, Gran?”

For their grandmothers and grandfathers tell

them their church has no need for its grim during

the day. The Light of the Lord guards the graves then.

No, the grim’s faire chlaidh—graveyard watch—

begins with sundown and ends with sunrise. During

the day, it sleeps unseen.

“Where?”

“Hush!” the elders scold. “Nobody knows. Now

sit up straight and pray!”

“But what if the Devil comes for us and not the

dead?”

“Then we’d be on our own,” say the elders. “Our

grim feels no love for the living.”

The parish’s youngest are in awe of their grim.

Until, of course, age wrings the last drops of

belief out of them. Then they sit still through the

sermon—every bland habit of it—and forget how

they ever used to glance sideways out the warbled

glass windows, hoping to glimpse a great black shape

lurking between the gravestones outside.

She had a name when she was alive—or what

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she considered a name.

“Good Gal,” her master used to say, patting her

on the head with a farm-roughened hand. “Good

Gal.”

She bore pups. Not once nor twice, but thrice,

and each of those times, she bore precisely three

pups, and those nine total pups were all born with

crystal blue eyes no one could account for, given the

glossy black coats and coal-dark eyes of both their

mother and their sire.

This was what drew the attention of the

wandering reverend.

The village, when he arrived, was hardly more

than four neighboring farms and the so-called doctor

who treated both their children and livestock. But

the reverend promised them blessings in great

bounty. He brought the Bible, and he read it to

them, for they did not know Latin nor anything of

William Tyndale’s in-progress translations.

“Take the stones from your fields,” said the

newly-arrived reverend, “and fell the tallest and

strongest of your trees. We will make your village a

proper one at last.”

They could not compete with the divine cathedrals

of Bristol or Carlisle, and the Reformation was the

same to them as the sky: immense and mutually

indifferent to the lives of common folk. But the

reverend said the greatness of the architecture

would not matter, nor would history’s record of

them. The only greatness that mattered was their

faith. The only record of their lives that should

concern them was God’s.

So they painstakingly built a church, humble but

well-crafted, making them, at last, a proper village.

Once it was complete, certain superstitions were

understood unspoken.

As they laid the last stone, the reverend said,

“Adam Bailey, bring me your dog.”

For, Adam Bailey’s dog was touched by God, he

said. That was why she birthed in threes: the Father,

the Son, and the Holy Spirit. The pups’ eyes were

alight with the azure promise of Heaven.

But when they came to drag her away from

her home—from her still-suckling pups, from her

family—they saw, too, that Adam Bailey’s Good Gal

was touched by Hell.

Her eyes flashed fire. She tore William Barker’s

arm nearly out of its socket, and even as they

overpowered her, she raged and raged and raged

at them.

“Better this way,” the reverend told them. “A

guardian whose love cannot rage is as useless as a

winter fire whose heat cannot also burn.”

Adam Bailey had been loath to give up Good Gal,

whose dark shape was as loyal as his own shadow.

Good Gal refused to tire until the rest of the farm

had gone to bed. She followed Adam Bailey through

both his earliest and his latest chores, sat patiently

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by Mary Bailey during long fall nights of meat

preservation, and minded the Baileys’ children as a

sheepdog minds cattle.

Where would his family be without their Good

Gal?

Yet Adam Bailey could not refuse the reverend

or his neighbors, all of whom knew as damn well

as he did that the first to be buried in a graveyard

would be doomed to stand guard there forever,

in case the Devil or any other of Hell’s influence

should come hungering for the vulnerable souls of

the newly dead.

So Adam Bailey was the first to cast dirt over his

dog and the first to turn away weeping from her.

For two weeks after her burial, the church grim’s

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death was a palpable thing. Her ragged breath was

choked with dirt that poured by spadefuls from her

snarling mouth. She staggered as though the weedy

drugs were still in her blood, and her eyes blazed

coal-like with wrath. The guilty villagers swore she’d

become a demon. And so started the cruel legends

that would curse her through the centuries.

She tried, as do all good dogs, to run home that

first night.

She ran the lengths of the churchyard—a shadow

marked by white teeth and glowing red eyes—back

and forth, back and forth, back and forth, furious

and miserable, yowling and snarling.

But she had been irrevocably bound to the

grounds of the church.

She could do nothing about her starving blueeyed pups, who refused to accept goat’s milk in

place of their mother’s, and who therefore died a

sacred three days after her.

She could do nothing for the Baileys’ youngest,

either. Elizabeth always did have a habit of wandering

toward the creek, though they had never feared for

her while their Good Gal was there to herd her

home.

“The grim feels no love for the living.”

Yet storms raged for weeks after Elizabeth’s

funeral, and lost legend says that the wind whistling

through the rafters of the Baileys’ farmhouse

sounded just like their Good Gal crying at the door.

Several hundred years have not cooled the heat

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in her heart.

The Baileys are buried here. She guided each of

them to the Other Side without being able to follow.

She knows grief greater than any of the mourners

who come and go with flowers for the newer, stillremembered graves.

“If you’ve even a glint of evil in your heart—the

smallest of shadows!—the grim will tear your soul

to shreds and drag the remains of it to Hell.”

She nudges every soul over with equal care, be

they the remainder of a rich man or a poor one, an

infant or a grandmother, a tyrant or a saint. Vilified

or honored or forgotten by the turn of time—she

does not care.

The church grim’s doggish memory is simple but

long.

A late frost kills the first of spring’s blossoms.

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The grim raises her head to the midnight wind

and knows it is blowing ill.

Wicked wraiths move in hours like this one. They

steal precious things. They peer into windows, and

God help the unsleeping soul who meets the glow

of their grinning eyes.

This will be the night, she knows, that decides

whether she died in vain.

She paces tetchily through the churchyard,

padding over the gnarled roots of centenarian trees

that once were saplings beside her mindful steps.

The witching hour leaks between the graves. She

pants as she runs—not out of need, but out of habit.

Life, as observed, does not give up its hold very

lightly.

Finally, the mists uncurl to reveal a figure

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unbundled against the cold.

The grim growls from the center of the

churchyard. The stranger smiles.

He’s new to the village but already well-liked for

his handsome face and honey-sweet words. People

think him kind—shy, perhaps—with a good heart.

But for all the homes and shop corners and streets

he has crept along, he has not been here. Not to the

church. Not yet.

It was only a matter of time.

“Salve, canis,” the stranger whispers. “Nonne tu

exspectare longum?”

Lengthy strands of misty drool dangle from the

grim’s teeth. She does not enjoy the sound of Latin,

however, honey-sweet it’s spoken. The bristling

heights of her black hackles wisp away into the

shadows, phantasmal, deathly.

“Ego adducere tenebrarum,” the stranger whispers.

His eyes are green as gardens—green as decay—

and they shine slightly, the way that cats’ eyes do

in the dark. “Erit vos mihi copulare? Aut erit vos conari

prohibere me?”

The grim trembles, tense with rage. Veiled

threats in dead-cold air can sound so very much like

somber prayers heard through warm summer soil.

She remembers the taste of larkspur and hemlock

and wolfsbane, and she seethes.

“Haec populus digna supplicium,” says the stranger,

in a voice that could rot apples down to their basest,

worm-feeding sugars, “ob vester tormentum.”

The church grim knows, better than any other

creature, living or dead or otherwise, that holy does

not always equal humane.

For what has she suffered? Towards what end,

and why?

The stranger smiles again, reaching out a pale

hand as though to pat her on the head.

“Bonum puella.”

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The parish secretary discovers the newcomer’s

body on the break of the next morning. His green

eyes are like glass, his body stiff and beaded with

dew. His throat is torn out so wholly that she spies

white pearls of vertebrae in the coagulated gore.

The secretary screams.

There are no other marks on the body, nor

around it, nor anywhere else in the churchyard.

Police find blood under his fingernails and confirm

through forensic tests that the blood belongs to a

dog.

But they can’t find any other trace of a dog in the

churchyard.

“The grim rings the funeral bells!”

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The villagers cover their ears in horror that

Sunday. Each bell toll feels rotten in their hearts.

They fear hidden dogs, but they’re safe. The grim

did her duty.

The elderly parishioners cross themselves and

rub their heirloom rosaries with one hand, while

with the other, they hold their great-grandchildren

tightly, telling them, “Now you see! The grim is full

of spite! It hates any living thing favored by God.”

“He was going to come to church today,” the

parish secretary cries, weeping for the charming

stranger who died on their doorstep. “The poor

dear was very interested in our flock.”

“As any wolf would be,” the priest murmurs.

Nearly five hundred years earlier, his twentytimes-great-grandfather had stood over a dying dog

and murmured, “Beati eritis cum vos oderint homines

et cum separaverint vos et exprobraverint et eiecerint

nomen vestrum tamquam malum propter Filium….”

Blessed are ye when men hate ye, insult ye, and

reject your name as evil….

The parish secretary dabs her eyes. “He was so

very sweet. Everyone liked him.”

“Vae cum bene vos dixerint omnes homines secundum

haec faciebant prophetis patres eorum….”

Woe to ye when all men speak well of ye, for so

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their fathers did speak of the false prophets….

The priest does not know of that night. History swallowed his forebear as it swallowed the Baileys and

the rest of them. But the priest is still of similar stock. When the baffled police post bulletins to ascertain

the stranger’s identity, the priest grimly decides that he had no name at all. At least, no name known to

human language.

They ask the priest if this poor, unclaimed stranger might be buried in his cemetery.

He refuses.

And later that day, he walks out into the oldest rows of headstones and stares between them, searching….

“Where does the church grim sleep?”

She sleeps on a grave known now to none but her, for centuries of weather have worn away Adam

Bailey’s name. And she sleeps without peace, for death drained the warmth of all she’d known and loved,

leaving an icy un-life that aches in the marrow of her spectral bones.

Now a voice perks her ears.

“Good girl,” the priest calls softly, as if offering a prayer of gratitude to the black dog whose sacrifice

protected his parish.

The church grim closes her eyes.

She remembers the feeling of Adam Bailey’s farm-roughened hand patting her on the head. She

remembers the way his fingers trembled as he dragged her to her doom, how hard it was to forgive him,

and how inevitable forgiveness was, too, from a dog who loved her master without condition.

The priest cannot see her, but he believes in her, as he believes in the heartbreaking loyalty of all beaten

dogs. So he calls out once more, with tears of grateful pity in his eyes: “Good girl.”

The trees of the churchyard rustle in peaceful, sunlit silence, and Good Gal, the church grim remembers—

fleetingly—how it felt to be alive. m

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Elke Trittel

Afternoon Fish/ Poisson de L’Après-midi

Geli plate collage print 15 x 15 cm

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Beyond the Register of

Our Knowing

m

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Night Forest

Araceli Esparza

Shadow

Light casted tree shadow

This is where we were born

In an afternoon snow fall

Covered in feathers

We searched for each other’s hands.

I pulled her, she pushed

We came out.

There are a hundred things that happen outside of a window,

If you watch long enough you will see us.

Araceli Esparza

Hidden

Molded

Fused

Coiled

This was us

In the back yard

We played

While our parents perched

Who let go of who, I don’t remember.

But when we saw the lost snowflake fly away

And we followed,

the wolves chased us far

from the perching, far from our parents

That’s when we began

And we held our souls

To remember our feathers.

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i wouldn’t do that.

your eye to the keyhole

and ear under the wooden door

because you’ll only hear

what you know you will see

don’t tell me i don’t know i understand

you told me once on the edge of sleep

you told me once in a dream and

nothings left but an attractive memory

of all the cracks i’ve slipped through

and all the contentment i’ve buried

under a need to suffer

but when this is over

i will still be standing

rooted in my childhood

and i’ll hate myself

i’ll hate myself but i’ll be alive

breaking out of this town i nearly

died i can’t do it, don’t want to

i refuse to leave the place you’ll be

i refuse to leave the cusp of all my dreams

i’m not giving up my ghost in the doorway

or the comfort of a grave i dug and lied in

these familiar barren walls i’ll paint again

with a more permanent infliction

these things are scaring me i wont

let you mold into a memory

i’ve almost already forgotten

Lindsey Peknik Bales

Keyhole

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Mathew Babcock

The Fifth of July

hawks a surplus stock of absence

from empty white tents

staked on hot asphalt lots,

the warped plastic windows

and loose flaps snapping

like every independent thought

with an elusive fuse, as if

saved for revivals that never arrive.

Gray cardboard casings bake

in culdesacs. Sulfur winds whip

the pungent sun. The town counts

down its smoldering lives.

The subsequent silence makes

the fanfare. The satisfying sigh,

the laughter. After—not Before,

not During—in the trinity

of true democratic creeds

will always stay the remaining grace

after the revels, after revolutions,

in our drunken race to level

and celebrate the next wasted space.

Eventually planets endure

as indigo exit wounds

in the blurry cosmos. The river

slows to fragrant black mud

jeweled with mossy stones

burned pale. A country

is the disaster people salvage

through centuries of gunpowder

and haze following the founder’s

speech. Reach forward, scar the calendar

with smudged stars of blood,

march through the showers

of gold and silver sparks,

and later you will still find yourself

standing where something needs

sweeping up, the charred clouds

in the cherry bomb dusk

and rusty air liberating those

who sense the strength of summer lasting longer

into the evening like the strained cause

of a street orator who, parched and drained,

goes on too long, unaware that the crowds, days

ago, stopped listening and staggered away.

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The Reiki practitioner places

her hands upon my knees

and I start to cry. I am

remembering your torn cartilage,

now halfway around the globe,

but still drifting between the

bones of my cranium on this plane.

I think of the historic time you

and I converged, ascended the stairs,

joints murmuring, and I arrived

at the landing rejuvenated; not

Pikes Peak but perhaps as close

as we may ever get—linked only

by the plains; I fear that was our

final ascent. I feel my own

kneecaps ignoring their boundaries

to slide around in my body, letting

my legs go in every direction of the map,

and migrating upward to join so many

other crusty plates, forming that

unstable shelter around my

aftershocked heart.

Julie Ann Baker

Brin

O r o g e n e s i s

A u g m e n t e d

Are you and I dissonant?

Two vibrations so close

but not quite synchronous

yet the performance does not

diminish the quality

nor alter our chord.

Are we fully resolved?

Perhaps no; yet here we are still

an accidental beauty for the trained ear

when most audiophiles

would demand perfect intervals

and definitive resolve.

Spark

If I wanted to truly live

my life I would spend it

with an ear pressed to your chest,

but a moment at a time

is all I can endure.

Your pulse frightens me, my own

private stress test, charting both

power and powerlessness.

Many medical knowns yet still

a mystery, a simple complication.

What if by terrible thought I made

it stop? Could I again

cause a start? Expose your

strength and fragility:

the muscle, electricity, push,

the unspeakable fire.

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On this day, we go out to the fields

differently. On other days we

are talking or laughing, singing,

moving together. Today, on our way

we say nothing, and as we near

the wheat, we separate, so

that each of us stands in a

part of this uncut field

surrounded by a stand of grain,

each at the heart of goldenness. We look at the stalks,

not at each other, and can’t

help seeing the sky behind

them as we sink to our

knees, combing a few stems

upward with one hand, separating the ears with their

hairy tendrils, their faint

scent of maturity. Lifting

one, letting the pink sky and

the flow of the sun about to

ascend into it kindle us, we

each raise the shears with

the other hand and take

this, isolate from the rest,

cutting its tether to the earth.

Paula Bonnell

Thunk & Splash

The lights dimmed . . .

A projected beam flew to the screen

and we saw a Japanese actor

lower himself from an unsteady dock

into a small boat, even more unsteady.

He stood up and a second man

jumped down into the boat

and the two of them stooped

and lifted themselves in tipsily

tipping and dipping mutual compensation so that the tippy boat

never spilled either of them

into the water.

There was no

boat; there was no water. All

there was

was a bare wooden

floor gripped by their four

bare feet. They made us see deck,

boat, and water with their

moves as they mirrored the interplay

of water, gravity, small craft,

and each other’s weight and

balance, interdependent,

unsteady lifts

and lowerings becoming steadier,

letting them stay afloat,

and the motes

in the beam of light stood

in for our dazed applause,

our feet not yet testing the floor.

Paula Bonnell

We Prepare

For the Eleusinian Mysteries

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Paul Dresman

D r e s s m a k e r ’ s D u m m y

No matter where essence is kept, it lacks specific

sense. Here, in this normative attic amid lyrical

clutter—including shadeless lamps, cramped

chairs with legs in the air, the smoky glass of a

past pair of spectacles, boxes and boxes stuffed

with papers, receipts, family photos and love

letters from the deceased— a place where odds

and ends like us collect— we reckon a huge

difference between the years before and since.

But what difference is it? Voices can be heard

through the windows, out in the immense

square, voices of those before the epidemic,

before the wars and the wars and the epidemic

again, before the usual rounds of death filled the

voices with nostalgia and regret.

Back here, in the attic, a blank torso stands

alone, naked, awaiting new clothes like the face

of a celebrity without dark glasses, an icon in

a dream that answered the question: what is a

motif of stillborn dreams?

White pillars proceed in the distance. A child’s

shadow casts long at sunset and dawn. In

between, not so much. White pillars recede in

the distance.

Time can be juxtaposed to the enigma of the

human trying to locate the human. It is an

endless cycle, a circular pattern, an orbit that

goes round in rings, something so regular it is

almost systemic.

I have been alive and now I am alive again amid

these things that are losing meaning, no more

bedraggled ravens, no more ole Kentucky homes

repeating the same old croaks— Whitman now,

not Poe.

Someone walks along through a remembered hall

singing “We Shall Overcome” and the acoustics

are perfect.

The past passes fast. It is as if we were a

house that contained an attic, and the house

deteriorates the walls collapse, the roof flies off

in a gust. Soon,

you will be able to see clear through the

evasions that contained, imprisoned, choked. It is

Juneteenth in June, 2020, and the people march,

demand and chant— they hallelujah the jubilee,

and the creaky old ghosts, the relics of racism

crumble to dust motes—a lifeless, shredded,

white cotton shroud scattered over a

dressmaker’s dummy, goddamned Jim Crow.

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Connor Drexler

Banging of Bones

I fear our names like the steady coil

of a predatory thing.

Rather than potting Asters to crown,

wait for prairie grass to grow

from mud-caked skin

as wings and antlers.

One day your copper eyes may emerald,

the stars may dip into the calm

pool of the earth’s atmosphere like

cautious toes, seaside.

Seconds will grow smaller,

memory demanding private soil

to blossom. You will grow to

recognize your skin, even with no memory

of slipping it over your body.

Notice the repetition of your feet

in stumble, clicking suddenly into place,

your bones banging with every gesture

against bitter walls of destiny.

The blind persistence

of the generations arrives, again.

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Folk Poetry & Story

Joseph Murphy

The Singing

I came to a house with many doors:

because I didn’t own enough freedom,

I couldn’t enter.

I went to buy more freedom,

but my money was worthless.

My lungs were taken as payment.

I burrowed into the ground;

slept upon a root.

Slowly, I grew a new pair of lungs.

I pushed the soil aside one sunny day!

With my freedom in hand,

I returned to the house;

pressed the doors open,

one by one.

The house was empty! I threw down my freedom

and cried.

I was about to leave when I heard a faint sound.

The walls were singing!

The sound grew louder; my bones

had begun to sing.

I walked from the house;

fell to my knees–the dirt also sang!

I looked over my shoulder:

My freedom had vanished – in its place

a human heart.

I fit it into my chest; shaped my tattered heart

into a pillow; fell asleep.

I woke by the sea.

The sound of the breaking waves

reminded me of the singing.

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Night Forest

Serra Rita

B o r n A g a i n N y c t o p h i l e

Wool grown thick, hooves worn thin

despite scorn, path I forged.

Slumber now unencumbered

by the weight

of the opinions of others.

Decided I’d rather roam alone

than get lost in the cacophony

of the crowd’s moans and groans.

Today’s lucid layers

punctuate,

in waves of polaroid poignancy.

Lines begin to arise

and constrictive bonds release.

As the picture’s freed

from being the darkness’ mistress

beasts of censorship fall to candor’s bliss.

Sit a spell and let me tell

when it was more than the absence of light

that darkened my night.

Once upon a time

the black sheep I used to be

Lying awake

between the somber, onyx-hours

of midnight, and half past three.

Squarely aware

this was the diminutive timeshare

My bizarre breed could blend in.

Lost and loveless

I longed for a life of amends

after all of my, “Amens.”

With baited breath I’d lay in wait,

wanting...wishing...wondering…

Why has no one

ever proclaimed their love for me?

Tear-stained pillow cases

left in my wake

as I strained to be

the person,

I thought others wanted to see.

Burning the midnight oil in refuge

flip of a zippo ignited my soul

I found torched end of emerald gold

softened the cerebrum’s cantankerous hold.

As the Mystic Riddler coiled

rationality, like a fire-eater’s exhale

shroud in crude-denial,

stacks of vinyl roared to life by candle light.

Studying virtue through verse

a steady yearning, kept tables turning.

Walking home mid-day

epiphany crept with every step

as the nexus of thought swept.

It was as if honey had been poured over me.

Imagine, amber nectar thick and viscous

oozing in opaque procession

from the crown of my head

to the tips of my toes.

With intrepid tingle,

a warm sensation seeped

between the porous pockets of my bones.

Slowly love descended

and everything became clearer,

as it pierced me to the marrow.

Realizing; I am enough

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the feeling of peace was at home in my center.

Ideas conceived in the daylight

hours later, the renewed me

was born under the veil of night.

Perched from open window

I allowed the purple haze to wash and anoint.

The star-patched blackness felt soft as velvet

as it caressed my bare, outstretched skin.

After years of diligent knocking

the portal to higher consciousness

had finally been exposed.

I now possessed the courage

to shatter the imprisonment cube

and set the colors free which skewed,

my predisposition, to what was preached as

reality.

Fearless of brash backlash

I broke beyond the circular mental vortex

offshoots of intellect, out popped dialects

never before etched into manuscript.

Considerations of syllables given the scissors

now stood dutifully slanted

pieces of blasphemies bandaged in bondage

merged the wrong words in the right

combinations.

Extracted by a tongue now marked by exactness

I said to the heard,

“Why do I strive to be like all of you?

You count each other to be put to sleep.

I rather bleed than bleat

I have no need to prove

that in my lungs a worthy life breath’s.

Trying to fit in a box so small with no air holes

it’s no wonder you can’t see the world like me.”

Started to go by my in-vision

and outlook morphed from grey to grandprismatic.

Like a J. Pollock fanatic,

I brush the haters off in colorful quips

dripped from rosy-red lips.

Because now when the moon’s on the rise

curiosity climbs, to the roof

and sets creativity free.

Steppin’ into the night

the psychedelic sheep is who I’ll forever be

with a presence you can’t deny

I refuse to self-marginalize.

Once I was lost, but then I found

paper is best for burnin’

Instead of unrelenting rule making.

The monopoly of life

doesn’t have to be spent on board

tiredly pushing a plastic agenda around.

Puzzled by the concept of being static

compounded with the need to be dynamic

I’s remained so amazed with life

I achieved master level enigmatic.

Damned mind no longer stagnant

got a need for flight stuck in overdrive

but viewer discretion revised;

get a taste of the good life

and you’ll walk out of the machine.

The road opens channels

never before seen.

Day-dreaming in hues between red and blue

deciding to grape and wine

while others grapple and whine.

Upset over the fact,

that even broken and cracked

my glass defies physics always holding half.

Remaining full of life

despite jealousy’s bitter wrath.

I should be awarded

an honorary degree in masonry

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Night Forest

Because I learned to rearrange

the walls which confine me

to form a door

past limitations and reservations.

Faster than a shapeshifter on speed,

I leave no time

for people to define nor refine me.

Pure of heart slash of lead

penning the tale following the ink trail

on the door knob key

is a password through a portal.

Crooked crack, acts as budding wedge

like links in a bridge

to leap from step

as dawn to dust or copper to rust,

hate us some must.

United in vibrant communication

like stepping stones skipping agitation,

with tidal surge and rock-hard riff reverb

self-evident truths

slap the unsuspecting backsides

of asinine white lies;

Night was not made

for the cautious or the damned.

I learned the dark, in its quiet and stillness

is not meant to perpetuate loneliness,

but rather serve as a beckoning blank canvas.

Night was crafted

for the creators and ramblers.

For the wild cards, the oddballs

the groovers, movers, and no doubt doers.

In all its untapped joyous madness

it’s time to reclaim the dark

as the unabashed flint

necessary, for an artist’s spark. m

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Folk Poetry & Story

Khadijah Lacina

First Touch

first touch

a poem

tucked

in a bread

basket

sixteen

words

bussed

from his

table

slipped

into my

apron

as i flustered

pink cheeked

cleared

the small

tokens

of everyday

away

lingering

near his

seat

where

pipe smoke

pine needles

pages of

old books

his scent

a ghost

of him

remained

the bustle

and hum

of the

café

the soft

song

of the

man at

the mike

the neon

light

flashing

backwards

the beginning

that still

has found

no end

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Night Forest

Jennifer Thal

Rothko Purity

The absolute of emotion: I am

in the interior of these walled

paintings, clotted-blood and white

slivers of bone, purple bruises,

the intimate space between muscle

and blood vessels and my pulse

settles in this womb-dark room,

I lay across the two benches in

the middle resting like a spine,

and settle in between the vertebrae

and watch the tendons moving in

tandem with the tantrums of children

restless within the small room.

Quiet now, watch this canvas-bound

lullaby, the saturation of emotion. Rothko

said he wanted to express the purity

of despair, of ecstasy, of absolution

and grief, and these two windowpanes

of lavender wounds nestled in linen-flesh

are tender to the touch. I cannot help

but look at the space in between, those

two panels looking at one another, turning

towards each other, inwards, within. I am

holding onto the breadth between with my

nails, clutching and prying open the space

with the desperation of a surgeon looking

for the bullet wound.

I am that space between, and I cannot

name, define, identify what two panes

or planes are turning inward to meet

with me in the middle. I cannot tell

in this Rothko sanctum if the gaps

are hungry and waiting to devour

or beckoning for the space—nonetheless,

we must stop and settle amidst the silence

and diffuse ourselves between the spaces

like the blurred edge binding two different

colors, our bodies without boundaries.

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Folk Poetry & Story

Jennifer Thal

Body Politics for a Minotaur

I encountered a Minotaur in a bar late

Saturday night, Monster Energy breath

and broad shoulders holding aloft the

yolk of his misery while drinking Lite

beer. A man that thought himself a beast

planted his hoofs in the splintered wood

floor and raised his desperate eyes towards

mine and asked for my blessing, from one

beast to another, and anointed me the patron

saint of body positivity, because his had been

torn from his flesh, pulled like molars that

others covet for their gold plating. He fell

on scarred knees and confessed he has

lost twenty pounds, admits this loss as a

victory and beseeches me to absolve his

betrayal to his bigger brethren while he

is hunted and vilified for the birthright of

his body, and still begs me to raze the maze

that ties him to the boundaries of his hybrid

flesh. I want to cradle his head in my hands,

kneel down next to his six-foot frame

hunched over the table sticky with spilled

drinks and remind him that he is no beast,

that the heroes who chase him are not the

sons of Gods gripping the divine right to

describe his form as monstrous, but are

scared he will use his former bulk to

shatter the sacred bronze Icons of concrete muscles and taught stomachs like

they were made of glass. I want to reach

down into the earth, uproot the ferns surrounding him and set fire to the foliage:

an offer of escape. Instead, he licks the

foam of devoured guilt and shame clinging to his lips and lumbers away, drunken

with the relief of his confession, another

handful of pounds shed.

When he wakes slowly in the morning,

listlessly searching through his maze, lush

with watering from his Atkins shakes and

nourished by protein powder, he will keep

turning corners and be met with the same

disappointment that when he digs hard into

the earth to seek an exit, dirt under his fingernails, he will find unearthed plots holding the

remains of myths that were once considered

love for his relic of a body. m

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Night Forest

A proud tribe, these women,

with fragile sparrow’s bones,

and collarbones like icepicks;

those small gold crosses a heavy

weight upon their slim necks.

Printed pastel dresses hang on eighteen

year-old frames, coral lips and mother

-of-pearl skin, soft sunflower hair

and cold cornflower eyes.

Country club-hungry women with doctorsecond husbands: Mothers and their pediasure

little league daughters spoiled by Stevia-sweet

grandmothers, these girls grow into devout

practitioners, kneeling before porcelain mass

and swallowing kale and bean sprout

supplements: a holy communion.

Here in this sanctuary of luminescent decor,

mothers press a gilded mirror to their progeny’s

palm, and remind them that mental illness

cannot squeeze into a size two, there are no

diagnoses or disorders in these bright corners,

and chase them away with motherly love.

Here, clean-linen scent and lemon-bleached

sundresses mask gin-breath, and a set of golden

bangles encrusted with semi-precious stones

can hide cancerous birthmarks.

These are good, church-going women

who lunge upon other women’s daughters

with a vultures appetite, picking at bare

bones, squabbling over excess flesh and fat.

Their daughters will inherit a tradition of blueberry

diets and weight loss challenges, Yankee Candle beige

houses and they will pretend to play house while

their stepchildren walk on eggshells, and slam

doors, and go to psychiatrists.

I wonder if Lily’s mother realized

the legacy she created when she held

her newborn daughter,

and saw herself.

Jennifer Thal

The Birth of Lily

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Folk Poetry & Story

Mary Silwance

Peony

the world’s woes

agitation of be loosed

patient

the into song

through may I become

me so

solitary abundant I dive

of heart petals

bud flung earthwise

upright to join the fragrant

tight chorus

the

may

Mary Silwance

Fig

fig

as

my teeth sink

into the yielding flesh

gritty and sweet

I think of your mouth

upon my yielding flesh

gritty and sweet

and the pleasure you give

me as delicious as

the fig

now filling

my mouth

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Night Forest

Hannah Hinsch

C i r c e

The lion at my side is bored of

razor-toothed wolves with their

midnight howls.

Like paws, my hands cake with

root-dirt and sea-floor silt.

My bedsheets are ruffled

yet always empty before sunrise

(sunrise, when the father who burned me

does not gaze on my island haven

yet hides a smile from his golden reins).

I sing—yet I am no near-ravished Daphne,

stagnant and root-bound; unlike my sisters,

I spin no fronds from my fingertips, I

make no swordfish dance

to amuse a man;

no longer drowned

in cavernous palaces

or crammed behind pressed

and bloodless lips,

my voice grows forth, sharp as

eel-sting, hawk’s caw.

I sing in ways that higher

gods do not stoop to hear;

my song weaves among the

grass until it reaches, odorous

and sweet, up to the

stars that crescent-smiled Artemis dims

for the hunt, her silver bow drawn,

arrow breaking free at a touch.

My throat trembles as I smear pig’s blood,

still warm,

onto my collarbone’s hollows.

I don’t kneel when he approaches

because I have met men such as him—

(laureled Odysseus, sea-battered

and golden, kisses my mouth and

strokes the lyre once more just to make me sing

again)—

so, I humor him, beginning an old song

luminous as hot starlight

held in my throat;

its spring water fills me,

fills my island garden,

makes hidden seeds

split open and

sprout bright, unholy blooms.

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Folk Poetry & Story

You always said you liked my hair long

the better for you to pull

Your own backward Rapunzel

Dragging me through the air

you taught me to isolate my despair

Throwing me at the walls

I learned to build my own

Abrasion was our liaison

The blood you shoved in my face

was love you named disgrace

Two blows to the head

and I’m still not dead

but too far gone to be shaken

On me you impose

rotten fruits that are yours to dispose

This shame is not my own

yet it will never let me go

You taught me everything

I never wanted to know

Cris Tyser

Rapunzel

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Night Forest

There lived, in Babylon, a most unfortunate man. He was born into extreme poverty and had only grown

poorer and poorer in the years that followed. He had no family and no friends–none that were still living,

and now he sat in prison, convicted of a crime he did not commit. He took comfort in the belief that his

imprisonment would be a short one, for he was in poor health and did not expect to live much longer.

But the Zagmuk winter festival was approaching. During Zagmuk the world turned upside down and

fortunes could be reversed. Each winter the king left Babylon for twelve days. Where he went, no one

really knew. In his absence, someone would be chosen from the lowest ranks of society to preside over

the city as the festival king.

So, when the unfortunate man was offered the position of festival king, he accepted. He had never

known a single day of good fortune and now he would be given a dozen.

His cellmates advised the man to reconsider.

“The Zagmuk festival occurs during the twelve shortest days of the year,” they warned him, “when the

barriers between our realm and the underworld are at their most permeable and spirits roam freely.”

“Every Zagmuk king has suffered miserable bad luck,” they would warn him, “Bad luck that was intended

for the king.”

When the man asked his cellmates about these former festival kings and the exact nature of the

misfortunes they encountered, he was given only vague rumors.

Someone was told that one of the kings had come down with a mysterious disease, or that one was run

over by a chariot. Somebody’s cousin had told him of a successful cloth merchant who had once served as

Zagmuk king, and financial ruin had followed.

“What misfortunes could I possibly suffer, that I am not already suffering?” the man replied. “I have

nothing else to lose, except my life. And very soon I will be dead. Why not enjoy twelve days in luxury and

comfort before my miserable life comes to its inevitable end?”

On the first day of Zagmuk, the man was taken from his prison cell and escorted to the royal palace,

where he was stripped of his rags, washed, and dressed in fine linen. He was carried to the throne room

on a gilded sedan and presented to the high priest of the land. The priest anointed the man, placed a crown

upon his head, and pronounced him king of the Babylonians.

That night, the hungry man stuffed himself with a sumptuous banquet in his honor and rested his weary

body on soft silk sheets.

On the second day of Zagmuk, the rite of sacred marriage was performed, in which the man was

presented with six beautiful young princesses and told to select one as his bride. On the faces of five of the

maidens, he saw nothing but haughty indifference, but the sixth princess looked directly into his eyes–as

one might regard an injured child, or a bird caught in a trap. Since this woman was the only one of the

six who would look at the man or speak to him, he chose her, and they were immediately married. That

evening, there was more feasting, music, and merriment in celebration of the new king and queen.

The third day brought more ceremonies, feasts and royal obligations, and the man was grateful to have

Lauren Tunnell

T h e E l e v e n t h N i g h t

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Folk Poetry & Story

his new wife by his side–discreetly showing him how

to hold his chalice and, eat his shellfish, and coaching

him through the ceremonial rites. By the festival’s

fourth day, he was finally becoming accustomed to

his kingly role.

“With you by my side,” he told his bride, “I feel I

could be the actual king of Babylon.”

“What do you mean by ‘actual king?’” his wife

responded, “You are the king of Babylon.”

“I am only the king of the festival.” The man

laughed.

“No,” his wife insisted, “You were crowned and

anointed by the high priest. You are supreme ruler

of the city and all of her dominions.”

“You mean all of these people must obey me?”

The man gazed about the throne room.

“All of these lords and priests, and guards, and

merchants will do whatever I say?”

“Yes, and all of the other subjects of your realm–

the farmers, weavers, builders, artisans–ten million

souls in all. You have the world’s greatest army at

your command, a fleet of warships and freighters,

a royal vault full of gold and precious jewels, and

control of the riches produced by your kingdom’s

fertile lands, abundant fisheries, productive mines,

and bustling cities. You answer only to the gods

themselves.”

“So, what about my friends in prison,” the man

asked, “who were also wrongly accused and are

being held there unjustly? Can I free them?”

“One word from the king, and your friends go

free,” she told him. So, he said the word, and his

friends were liberated. Both the unjustly accused,

and a few whom the man suspected were guilty.

Over the fourth and fifth days, the man exercised

his newfound powers with abandon. At first, he

incessantly consulted his wife about what authority

he possessed and which resources were at his

disposal–but soon discovered that his powers were

virtually limitless. She did advise him, however, to

partake in all of the traditional rituals of the festival–

since this is how one pleased the god Marduk. And

from Marduk, and Marduk alone, came the king’s

authority.

So, the man continued, however reluctantly,

to partake in the feasts, the parades, the singing,

and the chanting. He continued to watch the royal

entertainers and to receive priests and dignitaries.

Between these engagements he did as he pleased.

On the sixth day, he sent food and ale from the

palace’s kitchens to the impoverished city quarter

where he grew up, providing its hungry residents a

grand holiday feast–with plenty left over to fill their

pantries for many months to come. He followed this

gift of food with a horse-drawn cart filled with gold

from the royal vault, which he distributed freely to

the district’s residents, ensuring that every widow,

every orphan, and every lame beggar had pockets

full of solid gold coins. He asked his advisors where

he could find similarly impoverished subjects, and

discovered they were numerous–both within the

city and elsewhere in the kingdom. The man ordered

gifts of food and gold to be delivered to every needy

home in his realm.

On the seventh day, he realized that the rampant

disease among Babylon’s poor, meant his gifts of

food and gold could not truly restore their health

or ease their suffering. So, he assembled the best

physicians and healers in the land then sent them

into the squalid slums to treat those in need. He

was pleasantly surprised to discover that his own

ill health could be corrected by these gifted healers

and that, with treatment, he could expect to live for

decades more.

All these things were done, but by the eighth

day of Zagmuk, the man was giving serious thought

about what was to happen to him at the end of the

twelve day festival.

“So, I am the true king, the same as any other

king of Babylon?” he asked his advisors.

“Yes, that you are sire,” they responded.

“And everyone in the realm, yourselves included,

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Night Forest

must obey my every command?” he continued.

“You know that is true.”

“What if I told you that I wish to remain king

after the festival has ended? To be king until the end

of my days just like any other Babylonian king?”

“That can be arranged,” they responded, “If your

majesty orders it so.”

“Then I order to be made king for the rest of my

life,” the man declared, although he worried about

what would happen when the old king returned to

Babylon at the festival’s close.

“Can I order the execution of the former king?”

he asked, and his advisors explained that, while he

was free to make the order, it could not immediately

be carried out, since nobody knew the old king’s

whereabouts and, even if they did, he was almost

certainly in a faraway place outside of a Babylonian

king’s authority.

“In that case, he should be brought to me

immediately upon his return to the kingdom,” he

requested, and his advisers assured him that this

would be done.

On the ninth day of the festival, the man was taken

to the great Ziggurat of Marduk to hear grievances

against the crown in the presence of the great god.

In the center of the large central chamber, sat a large

stone altar. Standing behind the altar was Marduk

himself–thirty feet tall and carved out of granite.

Any subject of the realm who had been wronged

by the king of Babylon during the previous year was

welcomed to approach the altar and present his or

her complaint directly to Marduk.

A haggard woman in a frayed tunic and scars

across her face and body entered the chamber. She

clutched a small clay brick in her hand.

“Oh, great Marduk,” she pleaded, “Please have

mercy on me, for I have suffered much this year

at the hands of the Babylonian king. My village was

raided by the king’s army. Everything I had of value

was stolen or destroyed. My house was burned to

the ground, with me and my husband inside it. My

husband died and I was badly burned, as you can

see from my scarred skin. My land and my livelihood

were destroyed. I am homeless, hungry, destitute,

and utterly alone in the world, all because of the

king’s brutality. An account of all these hardships

and more is engraved upon this brick I carry, and

I present it to you, oh lord, so that you might right

what is wrong.”

The woman then placed the small clay brick upon

the altar.

The festival king had listened most attentively to

this woman’s lamentations. When she was finished,

he expressed his sincerest sympathy (as was the

customary thing for a king to do during the hearing

of grievances), but it was clear that his words alone

could not bring the woman comfort. He apologized

that he could not bring the woman’s husband back

to life or heal her scarred body, but he offered her

gold from the royal vault to compensate for the loss

of her home and property.

Next a man approached the altar and told of his

child’s abduction and subsequent sale into slavery.

He was followed by a young orphan who lost both

parents in one of the king’s military conquests. Next

was a man whose entire property was arbitrarily

seized then a woman who was forced into marriage

with a man she despised. Each plaintiff carried a

brick, detailing his or her complaint, to be placed on

the altar before Marduk. A few, who had suffered

multiple injustices, had brought multiple bricks. One

woman carried seven bricks–each bore the name of

one of the sons she had lost in his majesty’s wars.

The festival king listened to all of their accounts

of suffering. He offered financial compensation to

those who had been robbed of their homes, their

savings, their food stores, their livelihoods, or

anything else that could be regained with gold coins.

But most of the grievances he heard could not be

corrected, even with all of the wealth at a king’s

disposal. The dead could not be brought back to

life, broken bodies could not be mended, and painful

memories could not be forgotten.

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Three whole days had been allotted for

receiving the grievances, which was three times

the traditional number of days. The king in hiding

was a particularly ruthless monarch and his actions

during the past year had been especially brutal. He

had invaded many foreign lands and quelled several

local rebellions–the whole time looting, pillaging,

enslaving, torturing, and killing as it served his

purposes. He had funded these military endeavors

with oppressive taxes causing widespread hunger

and deprivation throughout his kingdom.

After the ninth, tenth and eleventh days, the pile

of bricks containing grievances had grown to several

cubits in height and covered half of the chamber

floor. People commented on how much bigger the

pile was than last year’s pile. This was the largest pile

of grievances in anyone’s memory. Marduk would

not be happy. As the final plaintiff laid the final brick

upon the pile, the sun was setting on the eleventh

day of Zagmuk. The high priest offered up the pile

of grievances to the great god.

“These three days you have heard of the wrongs

committed against the Babylonian people by their

king,” he told the festival king, “The great god

Marduk is very angry. He must avenge his people’s

suffering.”

“What can I do,” the man asked, “to right these

terrible wrongs that these people have suffered?”

“The king must face Marduk alone,” the priest

told him, “and Marduk will dispense with justice the

way he sees fit.”

“But the king is far away from Babylon,” the man

says, ”and no one knows where he is.”

“No, you are king of Babylon,” the priest said.

The man opened his mouth to speak but was

interrupted by the sudden shaking of the ground

beneath his feat. He looked to the graven image of

Marduk.

“The statue of Marduk. It has changed.”

“It is the same granite statue,” the priest told

him, “but you found comfort in his imposing strength

before. You felt safe under his protection. Now that

you are the thing he is protecting the people from,

his strength terrifies you.”

“No, it can’t be the same statue,” the man said.

“Look…”

The man pointed at Marduk’s eyes–previously

dull grey orbs of stone–which now glowed bright

like bronze in a fiery furnace.

“Marduk seeks justice for his people. The king

must meet with him alone and beg for his mercy.”

“But I am not the king he seeks. I am not the one

who committed all these wrongs.”

“It is the eleventh night of Zagmuk,” the priest

said, “and you are king of Babylon.”

“But I tried to help these people,” he pleaded,

“I compensated them with gold from the treasury.”

“Gold cannot atone for suffering,” the priest said,

“Only suffering can atone for suffering.

“I will not stay in this temple a minute longer.

Remove me from this temple this instant. That is

an order from your king!” the man yelled, but his

words fell on deaf ears, because the temple’s great

stone door was already closed, sealing him inside,

alone with the vengeful god.

That night, the children of Babylon lay awake in

k

their beds–terrified by a horrendous sound that

reverberated throughout the streets. A wail like a

man crying out in agony. A cry loud enough to fill

a city. The children would ask their parents what

these cries were and their parents would tell them

what they knew to be true. What they had been

told themselves when they were children. “The

eleventh night of Zagmuk is the longest and coldest

of the year,” they would say, “On this night that the

wind crashing against the pyramid is so hard and

so cold that it causes the very bricks to cry out,

but that is nothing for you to worry about. You are

in your house where you are safe and warm.” The

howling wails continued throughout the long night,

hour after hour, until moments before dawn, when

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the screams mercifully ceased.

On the twelfth day of Zagmuk, the king returned to Babylon. He was taken to the Ziggurat where he

k

ordered his guards to open the large stone doors and allow him entry.

Within the chamber, the king and his priests found the festival king’s lifeless body draped across the altar,

where the pile of grievance bricks had sat the evening before.

The sacrifice had been accepted. The king’s sins were absolved.

The king lifted the crown off of the dead man’s head and placed it on his own, marking the end of

Zagmuk and the return of life as usual to Babylon.

The body was taken to the royal crypts, and the new widow escorted to the palace’s west tower where

the other dowager queens, thirty women in all, were living out their lives in quiet comfort.

The King’s chief advisor told him of the damage that had been done in his absence. This year’s festival

king had been exceptionally disruptive during his eleven-day reign. He had all but emptied the treasury,

prisons, and food stores.

This was little more than a minor inconvenience to the king. He would simply have to steal back what

had been stolen from him. It would be easy enough. He was very good at thievery, coercion, and deception.

Great evil would need to be committed to return his kingdom to the state in which he left it, but the king

never had a problem with acts of great evil. He knew that the next festival year, the Zagmuk festival king

would atone for everything that must be done. m

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Folk Poetry & Story

I

t began as a lark. Just a notion, really. I saw many pictures of piled stones on the internet, called cairns, from

the old Gaelic. I thought they seemed rather New Wavy interesting. We have friendly neighbors who own

property with a long tree-covered lane. They generously allow all the other neighbors to walk there along with

children and dogs. In a grassy park-like setting, surrounded by trees, sits a large flat rock at the end of the pathway.

The slab is large and flat, easily big enough for a person to sit on or lay down.

Because the land around us is hilly and very rocky many small stones work their way to the top of

the soil. One day on our routine walk, I gathered an armful to place on the big rock. Each time we would

return, another stone was added to the design. My thought, to add ambiance to the woodsy atmosphere.

Just a harmless natural work of art. Then came the phone call.

“Bill, this Frank. Frank from across the street.”

“Sure, Frank, I know. What’s up?

“Are you the guy who has been making piles of magic rocks at the end of our lane?”

“Ma… magic?” I managed to stammer. “Yeah, that was me. I was having fun playing with balancing rocks

into a sort of sculpture. Is that a problem, Frank?”

“Well, yes, it is a bit of a problem for us. You see, we don’t believe in the occult or magic symbols and

all that mumbo jumbo crap.”

“Oh…” I trailed off. Then, “that’s fine, Frank, it’s just a pile of stones.”

“Bill? I knocked them down. Please don’t do that again.”

“Sure thing, Frank.”

I thought it a rather funny phone call, but it is their land, so I decided to let it pass. Then I began hearing

through the neighborhood network that all was not well with Frank and his wife, Sylvia. It seems that Frank

had slipped, and in the fall, broken his leg badly. The same day in a kitchen accident, Sylvia nearly severed

a finger. The very next day, mysteriously, a pipe burst in their home, causing much damage. Mysterious

because the outdoor temps were in the 50s. “Bad luck in threes,” I thought to myself.

I knew the unfortunate events happening across the street would keep Frank and Sylvia home for a

while. Their misfortune nagged at me. That night after three hours of sleep, I awoke refreshed as if I’d slept

through the night. I’ll never understand why, but I left my bed and pulled on sweats. Then the dog and I

slipped out of the house and headed for the lane. I had a light, but it went unused as we made our way

under a brilliant full moon. When we reached the flat rock, I found my original stones scattered on the

ground. I spent the next thirty minutes rebuilding my stone sculpture, adding a few new stones for good

measure. The newly rebuilt monument cast an eerie shadow in the moonlight. Satisfied with my mission,

the dog and I headed back to bed.

A week later, my phone chirped again. I could see it was Frank.

“Hello, Frank, how’s the leg?”

“Funny Bill, that’s why I called. We went to our doctors today, and the oddest thing.”

Kevin Calahan

Just a Pile of Stones

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“Yeah…?” I paused

“It seems my leg healing at an astonishing rate. Sylvia’s finger too. The doctors have no explanation.”

“That’s super, Frank. Happy for you both.”

“Oh, that’s not all. The insurance called and have determined that the burst pipe was a manufacture’s

faulty joint. Insurance will pay for everything to be repaired and extra money for our mental suffering.”

“I’m so happy things are going your way, Frank.”

“Bill, when we got back from the doctors today, we drove to the end of the lane.”

“Okaaay?” I drew out the syllables.

In a hushed voice, I heard, “Thank you, Bill.” Then the call clicked off. m

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Steven Sassman

I’m in Love with the Dark

P:124

Poets &

Authors

Katharyn Howd Machan Polly Alice McCann Gary Beaumier Beth Gulley

Elke Trittel

Night Owls

collage on paper 16 x 16 cm

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Biographies

from Night Forest

Claire-Elise Baalke (Honorable Mention

“Allepo Chicken”) recently received a MA in English

Literature at the University of Alaska, Fairbanks. She

mainly focuses on Medieval literature, but tends to

write fiction and occasionally poetry. She spends most

of her time hanging out with her cat, but the rest of the

time she is a court employee and part-time tutor and

adjunct professor of composition at the University of

Alaska, Fairbanks Community and Technical College.

Mathew Babcock Matthew James Babcock is

the author of Four Tales of Troubled Love (fiction),

Heterodoxologies (nonfiction), Points of Reference

(poetry), Strange Terrain (poetry), and Private Fire:

The Ecopoetry and Prose of Robert Francis (criticism).

His awards include the Juxtaprose Poetry Prize, a

Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Poetry Award, the AML

Poetry Award, the Next Generation Indie Book

Award for Short Fiction, and Winner of Press 53’s

Open Awards Anthology Prize for his novella, “He

Wanted to be a Cartoonist for The New Yorker.”

He was born in San Francisco and now lives with his

family in Idaho.

By day, Julie Ann Baker Brin works for public

broadcasting … not behind a microphone, but red

tape. So, by night, she prefers to use the other

side of her brain for creative endeavors. Julie is a

new member of the Kansas Authors Club and her

portfolio is at http://www.juliebrin.org.

Gary Beaumier (2020 Vision Award) A graduate

of University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee in English

Literature, he has been a long time poet. His work has

been a finalist for the Luminaire Award, and he was

a finalist for the Joy Bale Boone Award for his poem,

“The Migratory Habits of Dreams in Late Autumn;”

“Best of the Net” award for his poem “The Rio

Grande.” and first prize for Streetlight Magazine

for ”Night Train to Paris;” a finalist for the New

Millennium Writings for “From Certain Distances

in Space I Still See My Brother,” He was recently

shortlisted for the Charles Bukowski contest from

Raw Arts Review for his poem “Ghosting.” Find his

book of poetry From My Family to Yours published

2019 by Finishing Line Press and his second book

Dented Brown Fedora (Uncollected Press 2020).

Gary says, ”I have been a teacher, a book store

manager, and a gandy dancer (for one summer a

long time ago), I used to build wooden sailboats,

and I once taught poetry in a woman’s prison.” He

is a Pushcart Prize nominee for his poem “Night

Forest” and is often found walking by Lake Michigan.

Jerome Berglund A graduate of the University

of Southern California’s Cinema-Television

Production program, spent a picaresque decade

in entertainment before returning to the Midwest

where he was born and raised. For the last several

years he has lived a relatively quiet life, spending his

time reflecting, exploring what he learned over the

course of a somewhat checkered young adulthood,

via writing, poetry and fine art photography. Berglund

has previously published short stories in Paragon

Press’s Veisalgia and the Watershed Review, a play in

Iris Literary Journal, and poetry in Abstract Magazine,

Wild Roof, Lychee Rind, and Ulalume Lighthouse.

Paula Bonnell (Deep Poetry Winner) Her

poems have appeared widely in U. S. (APR, Rattle,

Spillway, The Women’s Review of Books, and dozens

more) both print and online. Several have also been

published in Canada, England, India, and Australia and

others have received awards from Kalliope, Negative

Capability, the New England Poetry Club, the Chester

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H. Jones Foundation, and the City of Boston.

Her 2017 chapbook “Tales Retold” follows three

collections: Airs & Voices, selected by Mark Jarman

as a Ciardi Prize winner; a 2013 chapbook Before the

Alphabet, a free-verse story of a child’s kindergarten

year; and Message, a hard-cover debut collection

which includes “Midwest” as heard on The Writer’s

Almanac, and “Eurydice,” a sequence chosen by

Albert Goldbarth for a Poet Lore narrative-poetry

publication award. Bonnell has also published fiction,

essays, and book reviews and is a PEN New England

Discovery writer fine more at www.paulabonnell.net.

Kevin Callahan author, artist, traveler hails

from Drake University, and both the Chicago and

San Francisco Art Institutes Kevin Callahan is an

“accidental poet” and the author of many published

short stories, and a novel. His award-winning artwork

hangs in collections throughout the United States,

and in Canada, Europe, and Israel. Kevin has won

numerous awards for his publication designs as well

as an award-winning writer, painter, photographer,

poet, and sculptor. His most recent books ROAD

MAP- Poems, Paintings & Stuff and A sheltering Place:

Musings of an Iowa Farm Boy is available through Flying

Ketchup Press in print and Ebook. Kevin currently

works and resides with his wife in Parkville, MO and

both of his sons are accomplished artists. For more

info contact the designer at [email protected] He

maintains a studio and gallery, the Elegant Line, in

Parkville, MO.

Robin Dellabough is a poet and editor with a

master’s degree in journalism from UC Berkeley.

Her first collection, Double Helix, Finishing Line

Press 202. She has published poems in Stoneboat,

Fifth Estate, Tiny Spoon, Maryland Poetry Review, Blue

Unicorn, Negative Capability, Gargoyle, Persimmon Tree,

and more. She has studied with Kathleen Ossip,

Alex Dimitrov, Amy Holman, among others, at the

Hudson Valley Writers Center. Currently she is

the Projects Director for Publishers Marketplace/

Publishers Lunch. ig @robindellaboughpoet.

Paul Dresman was born in Los Angeles. He is

a poet, a translator of poetry from Spanish, a coeditor of literary journals, including the bi-lingual

helicóptero, and an essayist. He recently won the

2020 San Miguel de Allende Literary Conference

poetry award.

Connor Drexler spends his life writing,

reading, hiking in the woods, playing and singing

music, and gardening. He hopes that people

realize the goodness of doing something for

its own sake. He works as a mortgage closer

and lives in Madison, Wisconsin. Check out

connordrexlerauthor.com for more of his work.

Araceli Esparza (Juror) is a Latinx Poeta with

strong migrant farmer roots. An MFA graduate from

Hamline University in writing, she has published

several books and most recently published in the

Astri(x) journal. She was also, named 2015 Women

to Watch by Brava Magazine. Araceli Esparza is

the founder and owner of Wisconsin Mujer a multi

media social engagement company that specializes in

cultivating content and connecting hearts. “We help

companies and nonprofits build bridges with donors

and audiences to create authentic connection

strategies that have a positive impact on minority

and marginalized communities.” You can hear

Araceli Esparza tell more stories at her new project

podcast: www.midwestmujeres.com

Gene Fendt published his first poem while a

graduate student in Philosophy at the University

of Texas in the 80s, where he also won a number

of university competitions. Since then he has been

teaching at the University of Nebraska, Kearney

where he is the Albertus Magnus Professor of

Philosophy. He has won a number of poetry

competitions and several Nebraska Arts Council

Artist Fellowships over the decades.

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Diane Glancy (Button Poetry Winner) is

professor emerita at Macalester College. Currently

she teaches in the MFA low-residency program at

Carlow University. Her 2019 books are It Was Over

There by That Place, The Atlas Review Chapbook Series,

and The Book of Bearings, Wipf & Stock. In 2020,

Turtle Point Press published Island of the Innocent,

a Consideration of the Book of Job. Among her

awards are two National Endowment for the Arts

Fellowships, an American Book Award, a Lifetime

Achievement Award from the Oklahoma Center for

the Book, and a Lifetime Achievement Award from

the Native Writers Circle of the Americas. Glancy

lives in Shawnee Mission, Kansas and Gainesville,

Texas. The rest is on her website: www.dianeglancy.

com.

Beth Gulley (Jurur) lives in Kansas City and

teaches writing at Johnson County Community

College. She has an MA from UMKC and a PhD from

the University of Kansas. She recently published a

chapbook, $!*# Hole Countries: A Find and Replace

Meditation. Her poems also appear in the Bards

Against Hunger Anthology, From Everywhere a Little:

A Migration Anthology, the Thorny Locust, and The

Gasconade Review Presents: Storm A’Comin’. She loves

thrift store shopping, traveling, and drinking coffee.

Gloria Heffernan (Rainy Day Poetry Winner)

is the author of the poetry collection, What the

Gratitude List Said to the Bucket List, published by

New York Quarterly Books (2019) and chapbooks,

Some of Our Parts, (Finishing Line Press) and Hail to

the Symptom, (Moonstone Press). In addition, her

work has appeared in over sixty journals including

Chautauqua Literary Journal, Stone Canoe, Columbia

Review, Magma, and The Healing Muse. She teaches

at Le Moyne College and the Downtown Writers

Center in Syracuse, New York.”

Karen S. Henry collaborated with Herbert

Blau and KRAKEN on Elsinore and Crooked Eclipses.

With Newell Hendricks, she received NEA grants

for operas The Cell and Ascona. Her collection,

All Will Fall Away, is available from Finishing Line

Press, and her poems have also appeared in

BoomerLitMag, Crosswinds, The Literary Whip (Zoetic

Press), and Stoneboat. Henry writes and performs

with Row Twelve Contemporary Music Ensemble.

Alan Hill Widely published in Europe and North

America, is the Poet Laureate of the small city of

New Westminster, BC, Canada. He came to Canada

in 2005, after meeting his Vietnamese Canadian wife

to be, whilst they were both working in Botswana.

AE Hines (Hope Poetry Winner) is a poet

from North Carolina living in Portland, Oregon.

Winner of the 2020 Red Wheelbarrow prize, he is

a recent Pushcart and Best of the Net nominee, and

was finalist for the 2020 Sewanee Review Annual

Poetry Contest and Montreal International Poetry

Prize. His work is widely published in anthologies

and literary journals such as Potomac Review, Tar

River Poetry, Atlanta Review, California Quarterly,

I-70 Review and Hawaii Pacific Review. His first fulllength collection, Any Dumb Animal released 2021

from Main Street Rag Publishing. www.aehines.net

Hannah Hinsch is a Seattle-based writer who

graduated from Seattle Pacific University with a

BA in literature and a minor in fiction. Hannah has

published critical essays in Cultural Consent, poems

in Lingua, Ekstasis, and Amethyst Review, and has

written for Image journal’s ImageUpdate. She was

the editorial intern at Image for two years. A writer

across genres, Hannah finds her writing inspired by

encounters with Greek mythology, Old and New

Testament theology, and by the green, salt-soaked

Pacific Northwest. hannahhinsch.com

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Hope Houtwed, (Juror) from Grand Island,

Nebraska, and a graduate of Northern Arizona

University with her BA in English with a focus

on Creative writing and two minors in French,

and Astronomy. She enjoys reading and writing

Dystopian Fiction, baking delicious cookies, playing

with her zippy cat Percy, and exploring culture. She

is a copyeditor at the University of Nebraska Press.

Katharyn Howd Machan (Inspiration Award

Winner, Featured Author) is the author of forty

published poetry collections, most recently Dark

Side of the Spoon (Moonstone Press, 2022), A Slow

Bottle of Wine, winner of the 2019 Jessie Bryce

Niles Chapbook Competition (Comstock Writers,

Inc., 2020), and What the Piper Promised, winner

of the 2018 Alexandria Quarterly Press Chapbook

Competition (AQP 2019). For more than three and

a half decades, picking up where Rod Serling left

off, she has taught creative writing at Ithaca College

in the Finger Lakes region of New York State.

Her specialty courses besides poetry are Writing

Science Fiction and Fantasy and first-year seminars

Fairy Tales: The Hero’s Journey. Her poems have

appeared in many magazines, anthologies, and

textbooks.

Candice Kelsey’s debut book of poetry Still I

am Publishing released with Finishing Line Press. Her

poetry has appeared in Poets Reading the News, Poet

Lore, and others while her micro-chapbook The Pier

House recently released from Origami Poetry Project.

She won the 2019 Two Sisters Writing’s Steve Carr

Contest, received Honorable Mention for Common

Ground’s 2019 Poetry Contest, and was nominated

for a Pushcart Prize. Currently, she is working with

the O, Miami Poetry Festival on an exciting project.

An educator in Los Angeles for twenty-one years,

she is devoted to working with young writers.

James Ph. Kotsybar (Dark Poetry Winner)

chosen for NASA’s special recognition, is the first

poet published to another planet aboard NASA’s

MAVEN spacecraft, appears in the Hubble Space

Telescope’s mission log and was awarded at NASA’s

Centaur Art Challenge. He’s earned a standing

invitation to read his poetry at the EuroSscience

Open Forum. More info at BardOfMars.com.

Khadijah Lacina grew up in Wisconsin. She

lived in Yemen for a decade, and now homesteads

in the Kickapoo Valley. Her writings have appeared

in various anthologies and internet venues. A Slice

of Sunshine: The Poetry of Colors was published in

2012, and she has had two chapbooks published by

Facqueuesol Books.

Caroline Laganas (Blue Poetry Winner)

recently earned an MFA in Creative Writing from

California Institute of the Arts. She previously

received a BA in Journalism from Pepperdine

University. She has attended the Napa Valley

Writers’ Conference, and the Kenyon Review

Writers Workshop. Her poems have appeared

or will soon appear in The Offing, the City of

Santa Clarita’s Sidewalk Poetry Project, FishFood

Magazine, and elsewhere. She is currently writing

and illustrating her first book of poetry.

Luna Dragon Mac-Williams (2nd place

Blue Poetry Winner) She is a playwright, poet,

actor, dancer, handmade jeweler, zine editor,

arts educator at After School Matters, and an

undergraduate student at Wesleyan University. She

is a proud Chicagoan, born and raised. Her oneact, Good Strong Coffee, premiered at Chicago

Dramatists through Pegasus Theater in winter 2018.

She has recently been published in Ariel’s Dream,

and her poetry appears in the 2020 KCBS Zine.

She believes in sweet coffee, wishing at 11:11, and

helping youth honor and share their personal &

collective narratives. Instagrams: @lalunadragon @

bylunawithlove. Issuu: @lunitadragon.

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Eric Machan Howd (Ithaca, NY) is a poet,

musician, and professor. He is passionate about the

language of songs and words and often brings that

passion into his teaching at Ithaca College. His poems

have appeared in River City, Caesura, and ellipses,

Nimrod, The Healing Muse, Yankee Magazine and

elsewhere. Eric earned his MFA in Creative Writing

(Poetry) at the Vermont College of Fine Arts. He

was a recent guest poet and lecturer at a conference

on Slovenian/American poetry in Ljubljana, Slovenia.

He shared an excerpt of his essay “A Non-Binary

Approach to the Arts: the Continuum of Word and

Song.” He believes that magic thrives in the dark.

Janet McMillan Rives (Blue Poetry Winner

Honorable Mention) grew up in Connecticut and

Arizona. She retired as a professor of economics

from the University of Northern Iowa. Her

poems have appeared in Lyrical Iowa, Ekphrastic

Review, Sandcutters, The Blue Guitar, The Avocet,

Fine Lines, and The Raw Art Review as well as the

anthologies The Very Edge (Flying Ketchup Press),

Women Facing West, Voices from the Plains, and

Desert Tracks: Poems from the Sonoran Desert.

Her chapbook, Into This Sea of Green: Poems from

the Prairie released Finishing Line Press 2020.

Lindsey Martin-Bowen’s (Juror) Pushcart

and Pulitzer-prize nominee Lindsey Martin-Bowen’s

fifth poetry collection, The Book of Frenzies was

released last summer (Perian Springs Press 2022),

and as part of its Pacific Northwest authors series,

Oregon’s redbat books will release her sixth

collection Cashing Checks with Jim Morrison later this

year (April 2023). Her fourth poetry collection,

Where Water Meets the Rock (39 West Press 2017)

contains a poem named an Honorable Mention in

Writer’s Digest’s 85th Contest. Her third book,

Crossing Kansas with Jim Morrison won Kansas

Authors Club’s 2017 “Looks Like a Million” contest.

Her poem “Inside Virgil’s Garage” (Chatterhouse

Press 2013) was the runner-up for the Kansas

Writer’s Authors Club Nelson Award, 2015, and

The Gulf Times, LoHud.com, and The Kansas City

Star named her first collection, Standing on the Edge

of the World (Woodley Press/Washburn University)

one of the Top 10 Poetry Books in 2008. Cicada

Grove (a novella) won the grand prize in the 1987

Barbara Storck Creative Writing Contest. She’s

also a part of the 365 Days: A Poetry Anthology (v

1-4). Her poems have appeared in New Letters, I-70

Review, Thorny Locust, Flint Hills Review, Coal City

Review, Phantom Drift, Ekphrastic Review (Egyptian

Challenge), Rockhurst Review, and other lit zines.

Polly Alice McCann (Juror) received her

MFA in writing from Hamline University with an

emphasis in short fiction and poetry. Polly Alice

has been published internationally in journals like

Naugatuck River Review, arc24, 365 Days: A Poetry

Anthology (v3-4), and elsewhere. She credits much of

her creative work from her research on the creative

writing process that won her an Ernest Hartmann

award from the International Association for the

Study of Dreams from Berkeley, CA. She’s dreaming

of a doctorate in folk tales.

Hayli McClain (Dark Retellings Short Story

Winner) earned her BA in Creative Writing from

Susquehanna University and plans to earn her

Master’s degree in Stirling, Scotland. Her stories

have also appeared in places such as Luna Station

Quarterly, White Wall Review, The Molotov Cocktail, and

Flash Fiction Magazine. She dreams of getting book

deals next. In the meantime, being a lover of learning

and beauty, Hayli is trying to teach herself the Irish

language. Is fearr Gaeilge briste, ná Béarla clíste. Or

so Hayli tells herself, in between butchering lenition.

Barbara A Meier moved home to Kansas,

where she cherishes the fields of wheat and sorghum,

little boys and girls in John Deere tractor shirts,

and the wide blue bowl of the sky. She works in a

second-grade classroom and takes time to drive the

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dirt roads around Lincoln, Kansas. She has three

published chapbooks, Wildfire LAL 6, from Ghost

City Press, Getting Through Gold Beach, in November

2019 from Writing Knights Press, and Sylvan Grove,

from The Poetry Box. Find her at basicallybarbmeier.

wordpress.com or @poetwholivedbythesea on FB.

Louise Moises was born and raised in San

Francisco Bay Area, graduating from San Jose State

with a major in Speech and Drama and minor in

English. Over her seventy-five years, she has been

a teacher, a storyteller, a puppeteer, a retail clerk,

and the owner of an antiquarian bookstore, along

with being a wife, mother, and grandmother. She

enjoys traveling in her twenty-three-foot RV with

her cat, exploring places that inspire her writing.

Her poems and stories have been recognized by

the literary divisions of the San Mateo County and

Marin County Fairs, the Ina Coolbrith Circle, and

the Artists Embassy International, Bay Area Poets

Coalition, Keats Soul Making, and thewritelaunch.

Hayden Moore (Mythical Retelling Short Story

Winner) was born and raised in Georgia and has

lived in New York City for the past twelve years.

He studied Journalism and Theater at the University

of Tennessee. In 2021 he was published thirty-five

times for his short stories. He lives with his wife

and cat on the waters of Jamaica Bay in Queens.

www.haydenmooreauthor.com

Adriana Morgan completed a Ph.D. in French

Literature at the University of Letters in Nantes,

France. She is fluent in six languages and worked

as a translator and terminologist at the European

Commission in Luxembourg and the United Nations

in New York. She taught French at the University

of Jamia Milia Islamia, New Delhi, India, the French

Alliance, and the Universities of Valparaiso and

Vina del Mar, Chile. She currently works as a multidimensional artist: painter, poet, and children’s

picture books writer and illustrator.The first prize

winner of Acumen International Poetry Prize,

2020, UK, she is also the first prize winner of the

Midnight Mozaic Fiction (Medium, 2019), one of the

selected winners of the Canadian poetry contest—

Quebec and the Francophony, and second prize

winner of the Daniil Pashkoff International Poetry

Contest, 2018, Germany. Morgan’s artworks

and literary works have been published in Beyond

Words Literary Magazine, Infinity Room, Spillwords,

Flying Ketchup Press, Ullalume Lighthouse, Feminine

Collective, and Chestnut Review, among others.

Chapbook Enlightenment, forthcoming in July, 2021,

by Moonstone Art Center, Philadelphia, US.

Cara Morgan is a University of Maine graduate

with a BA in English, critical writing. Her research

appears in the spring 2019 issue of the Queen City

Writers online academic journal. Her creative

works appear in publication by The Open Field

Literary Magazine, Plants & Poetry Journal, For Women

Who Roar Magazine, They Call Us Feminist Literary

Magazine, and forthcoming publication by slam

poet Neil Hilborn. She is a CPTSD and chronic

illness sufferer, poetry slam champion, home

baker, and cat mom. Her poems confront disability

and trauma, and the journey to forgive them.

Charlene Moskal is a Teaching Artist with The

Alzheimer’s Poetry Project in Las Vegas, Nevada. She

is published online and in print, including Connecticut

River Review, Oyez Review, and Sandstone & Silver; an

Anthology of Nevada Poets. Her second chapbook is

One Bare Foot, (Zeitgeist Press). She likes laughter

and coffee ice cream hot fudge sundaes.

Joseph Murphy has been published in a wide

range of print and online journals. He is the author of

four poetry collections, The Shaman Speaks, Shoreline

of the Heart, Having Lived, and Crafting Wings. Murphy

is also a member of the Colorado Authors’ League

and for eight years (2010–18) was poetry editor for

an online literary publication, Halfway Down the

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Stairs, a New Zealand-based review. Learn more:

josephmurphypoet.com Twitter: @poetfm

Vivian O’Shaughnessy Native Texan,

attended The University of Texas at Austin; Ecole

Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts, Paris, France;

Cell Theatre visual artist. Publications: www.

tearsinthefence.com No. 65 Winter/Spring 2017 p.

75; Us poetry Editions Corps Puce collection Cent

papiers (n.8); Le monde, “les réfugiés et la mer ou:

J’ai mal à la Méditerranée” pp. 11-12; Passport/

Passeport/Pasaporte drawing “L’insurrection

poétique L’engagement dans le monde d’aujourd’hui

des chasseurs-cueilleurs de poèmes” p. 107; poetry

in French Editions Tensing Giovanni Dotoli Je La

Femme! (Woman I Am) and drawings 2014 www.

editions-tensing.fr ; Editions Les Poètes FrançaisParis Société 2016 Giovanni Dotoli Dialogue avec

Assia Djebar drawings Royal Society of Literature

- 2020 Modern Poetry in Translation, Cambridge,

workshop contributor Plath Profiles Journal, Indiana

Univ, contributing editor. VivianOShaughnessy.com

@vivianoshaughnessy

Lindsey Peknik Bales a Kansas City native.

“I received my Bachelor of Arts degree in English

Literature from UMKC and my Master of Science

degree in Library Science and Information from the

University of Central Missouri. I am currently an

English teacher at a private school in Kansas City. I

self-published my first Young Adult novel The Things

in My Web in 2019. My hobbies include reading,

paper crafts, traveling, and anything Nancy Drew.”

www.lindseypeknik.com

Jaidyanna Podsobinski (they/she) is a poet

and neurodivergent educator teaching neurodiverse

youth in Portland, OR, where they are an aficionado

of the local ice cream.

Deborah Rosch Eifert (Love Poetry Winner)

is a poet and clinical psychologist. Her poetry

has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize by the

literary publication, Constellations. Her work has

been published in The Gateway Review, Persephone’s

Daughters, the Poets of Maine 2018 anthology, and

the anthology Exhuming Alexandria, among others.

She was a semifinalist in the 2018 Split Rock Review

Chapbook Competition, and First Runner-up in

the 2018 Esthetic Apostle Chapbook Contest. She

received an Editor’s Choice Award from *fws: journal

of literature & art* in 2019, and was named ‘Poet

of the Month’ by Flying Ketchup Press in March

2020. Deborah lives and writes in Maine, where

she obsesses about rocky shores and spraying surf,

proper English tea, fairy tales and where to find a

decent cannoli.

Antoine Rufus It is his aspiration to utilize

poetry as a means to further develop the connections

between different subjective yet uniquely crafted

human experiences so that we may not only better

understand each other, but better understand

ourselves, and create a genuine appreciation for

life’s merits. Rufus has been writing poetry for over

fifteen years. His passion started, as with many

others, trying to find a way to express the intense

emotions that accompany the experience of life. It is

a great pleasure to even be submitting my work for

your eyes to read and I do hope that it touches you

in some way.

Katie Sakanai (Original Folktale Winner) was

born and raised in northeast Pennsylvania and the

southern tier of New York. While growing up there,

the only two radio stations that came in reliably were

the oldies station and the country station. Sakanai

is a musician and Russian enthusiast. She enjoys

writing original folk tales and telling her daughters

impromptu stories involving dragons, trolls, and

fearless princesses. She writes songs, short stories,

and poetry full of nostalgia for her rural upbringing.

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Night Forest

Her story “Labyrinthula Animalis” is published by

Parsec Ink in the anthology Extinction. Find her at @

denver_city_music or on LinkedIn.

Steven Sassmann (Dark Poetry Honorable

Mention) is the author of nine books of poems

and poetry. His most recent released Spring 2019

from Spartan Press. Published in many magazines

and anthologies including Chiron Review, Men in the

Company of Women, Wingposse Art, Sassmann has

also written and performed a poetry series on High

Plains Public Radio. Not content with formed or

narrative poetry printed in journals, Steven created

his own form of poetry with a nod to popular memes

he saw circulating on social media. He decided that

creating visual poetry as sharable images would be

a great way to circulate more poetry in visual sound

bites. Steven’s poetic venue became Facebook. In

response to the rapid feedback of the multinational

community on community poetry sites, his style

evolved and became easily recognizable because of

it’s readable “glyphic” form.

Mervyn R. Seivwright is from a Jamaican

family and was born in Dulwich, London, England.

He has appeared or has forthcoming published

works in AGNI Literary Magazine, The American

Journal of Poetry, Salamander Literary Journal, I-70

Review Literary Magazine, Cosmonauts Avenue Literary

Journal (Canada), The Trinity Review (Canada), African

American Review, Voices Israel Anthology, filling Station

Magazine (Canada), Griffel Literature Review (Norway),

Allium, A Journal of Poetry & Prose, Burningword

Literary Journal, Santa Fe Literary Review 2021. He is

a Pushcart Nominee, Finalist in the Cutbank 2021

Genre Contest for Poetry, Mount Island’s Lucy

Terry Prince poetry contest Second Runner-Up,

Voices Israel’s 31st Rose Ruben Annual Poetry

Competition, Honorable Mention, and has a poem

commissioned by the British Museum, Ipswich, UK.

Mervyn currently lives in Schopp, Germany. www.

clippings.me/mervynseivwright.

Rita C Serra After graduating from UNC with

a degree in US History, Rita backpacked around the

world for twenty-eight months, often solo, letting

experience be her guru. Today she calls Northern

California home and spends her time writing,

farming, and developing her photographic eye. You

can find more of Rita’s poetry and other creative

work at www.thatblondevagabond.com as well as

her author page on Amazon.

Caroline Sidney (Dark Retellings Short Story

Winner) is a native of southeastern Kentucky,

where she lives with her husband, two cats, two

dogs, and plants in various stages of dying. She

enjoys irreverent cross-stitching, baking, and good

storytelling in all forms. Find her at @carolineesidney

on Twitter. Her poems, “Night Creatures,”

“Traveling by Lightning,” and “Wind Chimes” were

published in The Write Launch in January 2020.

Andi Talbot (he/they) is a pushcart nominated

poet & photographer from North East England.

They have released two chapbooks, Burn Before

Reading (2019) and Old Wounds//New Skin (2020),

both via Analog Submission Press. They are also the

co-host of the Choose Poetry Choose Life open mic

event and poetry editor for Periwinkle Lit Mag.

Jennifer Thal is from the suburbs of Philadelphia.

She is a current student at the Chicago School of

Professional Psychology in Chicago pursuing her

doctorate in Clinical Psychology. Her work has

appeared in The Esthetic Apostle, Typishly, and Haunted

Waters Press. She has received an International Merit

Award from Atlanta Review 2019 International Poetry

Competition for her poem “Spring Rebellion.”

She enjoys reading at open mic nights, advocating

for body positivity, and empowering her readers

through her writing.

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Folk Poetry & Story

Elizabeth Tomanio (Deep Poetry Winner)

is a poet who writes poetry to help process the

surrounding world and to relive a moment which

has passed too quickly. She shares her work with a

group called Chapter & Verse in CT. She won first

place in the Love Tanka Contest sponsored by West

Hartford Libraries with her tanka titled “What Is

This?” She is published online in the Summer 2020

issue of Please See Me for the theme Heroes and

in the 6.3 issue of Snapdragon: A Journal of Art &

Healing. Her poetry can be found in print publication

in Caesura 2020 and Waking Up to the Earth Anthology

with Grayson Books selected by Margaret Gibson.

Elke Trittel Enjoy her mixed media originals

from her studio in France as they provide her fans

with a colorful journey into the wonderful inner

world of the interior imagination. Her dreamscapes

and characters evolved from her fifteen years of

traveling around the world. Primarily selling her

originals from Instagram and to collectors, she

works in acrylic painting to collages to mixed media

works with a zest of humor.

Lazarus Trubman a college professor who

taught the Theory of Literature for twenty-three

years. In 2018 he retired to devote his time to

writing. His poetry had appeared in dozens of

publications, among them, The Cordite Poetry review,

New Reader, Halcyone, Exposition Review, The Moving

Force, MacGuffin, Lullwater Review and elsewhere.

Lauren Tunnell is a freelance writer,

curriculum developer, and playwright. She is a

graduate of Hamline University’s MFA program in

Writing for Children and Young Adults. Much of

her work at Hamline involved extensive research

on Mesopotamia, and the infancy of human

history and written literature. She was fascinated

by the unexpected ways in which the influence of

Mesopotamian tales, the very oldest stories we

have, can be found in our modern folklore. She lives

in Houston with her husband and two sons.

Cris Tyser spent her formative years keeping

quiet, locked in the dark corners of her own mind.

Now a grown woman, she has a lot to say, and a

torch to wield. She is inspired and propelled by

vulnerability, and much of her work is an experiment

in catharsis meant to further the conversation about

mental illness. She’ll be the first to admit she’s not

quite sure where she’s going—but her heart has

never lead her astray. You might say she’s a jack of

all trades, on the way to mastering some. Forever

married to the arts, you may find her in the local

music scene, in the theatre, covered in clay, or

sneaking away from the muse just long enough to

snuggle with her two cats and enjoy a good film.

You can also find her at Alchemical Reaction on

Facebook and Instagram.

Agnes Vojta grew up in Germany and started

writing poetry as a child. She spent a few years

in California, Oregon, and England, and now lives

in Rolla, Missouri where she teaches physics at

Missouri S&T and hikes the Ozarks. She is the author

of Porous Land (Spartan Press, 2019) and The Eden of

Perhaps (Spartan Press, 2020), and her poems have

appeared in a variety of magazines.

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Design

The design of this book design was inspired with a nod to key designer Ke-vin Callahan. Ke-vin is the author of many

short stories, poems and a novel. His book, A Sheltering Place: Musings of an Iowa Farm Boy, is available through Flying

Ketchup Press in print and Ebook.Callahan earned a BFA from Drake University with painting graduate studies at

SFAI and SAIC–OxBow. He currently works and resides with his wife in Parkville, MO. The over amount of room

and style of this book was designed by artist and editor, Polly Alice McCann who noticed that if there is one thing

poets love about books, it’s the white space. “You could even write notes and doodle in the margin,” she says. “I

wanted this book to feel like there is just enough room: a sunny kitchen, a fresh wall of paint, space to write more.”

About the Typeface

For a nod to the modern take of these folk voices we chose the typeface Gill Sans for our body text, lauded for

its simplicity, readability, and sans serif beauty. Gill Sans is a humanist sans-serif typeface designed by Eric Gill

and released by the British branch of Monotype from 1928 onwards. Gill Sans is based on Edward Johnston’s

1916 “Underground Alphabet,” the corporate font of London Underground. For accents we chose Kollektiff to

symbolize the thin and narrow spaces where folk magic tends to reside. We chose the new 2017 alternative font Six

Caps created by notable designer Dogu Kaya for it’s clean and low-contrast. For our poets and authors names we

chose hand inked look Adorn Garland by creator Dai Foldes published by Laura Worthington to share the personal

nature and warmth of the folk voices you met in this book. Thanks for supporting the folk arts.

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Flying Ketchup Press A Kansas City Publisher for the epic acceleration of great literature, poetry, children’s books

and fine arts materials. Our mission: to discover and develop new voices in poetry, drama, fiction and non-fiction

with a special emphasis in new short stories. We are a publisher made by and for creatives with the spirit of

the Heartland. Our dream is to salvage lost treasure troves of written and illustrated work- to create worlds of

wonder and delight; to share stories. Maybe yours.

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BY

FLYING KETCHUP PRESS

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• kNew: The Poetic Screenplay by Poet T.L. Sanders

• kNew: The Chapbook by Poet T.L. Sanders

• Sweetened Condensed: Poems & Photographs by Rebecca Grabill

• Road Map: Poems Paintings & Stuff by Kevin Callahan