Strange Dialogue: Picture and Prose
Springtime (when fancies turn to thoughts of love) is high time to swap that dog-eared, fly-specked, bookworm-infested copy of The Hobbit you’ve been carting...
The One-Armed Swan Sister
I find it is much harder to sew
now that one of my arms has become
a giant white wing. It’s nonsense
to assume, of course, a...
Simbelmynë
Photography by Paul Barson
Even here the glimmering simbelmynë grows
in the ghostly pale green meads and haunted hollows
far from the hallows somber in their ordered...
Bestiarum Vocabulum
Animals have always taught us lessons. We look to them to help us describe our own behaviors and attributes: We are as sly as...
Making Witch Bottles With My Mother
A midwife—she reaches
for the flower’s afterlife and dyes
it with a puddle of St. Germain. We’re dealing
in floral ghosts & flakes of paint
curved over our...
And Maidens Call It Love-In-Idleness
Children! To perform this nifty trick, ask your mother for a shelled-out lemon, balled-up handkerchiefs, a vial of perfume, fire, and a pistol. “I...
The Tree and She
In her first memory of this life, she clutched two pecans in her small hands. Warm brown with tabby cat black stripes, dry and...
My Arabian Superheroin
Every time my writing gets stuck, I ask myself, “How would Scheherazade get out of this?” Of course, she would know what to do. That’s...
Selkie
It’s not that I’m not comfortable
in my own skin. It’s that I can’t
ever be without it—it’s a harness
in a handbag, holding me to the...
Dwarf-Crested Irises in Canaan, West Virginia
The realist masters have avoided
the Appalachians and I have to assume
that this is because fayeland is difficult
to paint. What to do with...