The Scarlet Slippers
In the land of the Sand Riders, where women go veiled from top to toe, there lived a young man who dreamed of love....
In The Studio with Sarah Sparkles
PHOTOGRAPHY BY STEVE PARKE
Sarah Sparkles is a crystal-loving mermaid in Brooklyn who’s worked on window displays for Bergdorf Goodman for over a decade—and has...
The Life of Tolkien: On The Big Screen
John Ronald Reuel Tolkien died in 1973. Now, forty-five years later, the film Tolkien will bring him back to life onscreen. For the time being,...
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...