Article From 2014 Spring Issue #26
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Sing your song for us, mamma, they cry, sing your song, sing your song,
small white cheeks upon pillows, bright eyes blinking the black.
Tearless lovelies are mine, who know only sugarplums and ponies;
they beg night...
Illustration by Julia Jeffrey of Stonemaiden Art
Sometimes when we fight,
I want to slip on my seal skin
and disappear beneath the waves.
I warned you when we married
there are only so many times
I can drink my own tears
before the ocean comes...
Cover Images by ©Brian and Wendy Froud
I dream of green eyes and the silent fall of petals on my hair; the sound of someone breathing softly in my ear.
I dream of a hand gently stroking my cheek,
waking me with...
Feature Image Credit: Peter Horree / Alamy Stock Photo
He drifted through kelp, broken
scalp diffusing red like squid
ink clouding itself. Crowded, the spiny
urchins hinged their drift west. He slept,
I knew, towards his death. What harm
could there be in waking him?
Through...
Illustration by Marina Mika
We know you only by your absence.
The hole left behind, pressed
through the drifts like something
fallen from a great distance.
Wings shorter than we would have expected,
stumpy and round as a sliced orange peel
and your body a footless...
Painting by Anne Bachelier
Your once-silken voice will desert you, your legs
will make every step on land a torture.
There will come a time when you miss
the seaweed and seals, your old ways,
your old body. Now fit for neither land
nor sea,...
My feet leap in the world of Faerie
My body dances in my sacred grove.
In my eyes, you see something wild –
something you cannot tame and take
back home to your castle to meet your king.
But you will surely still try.
My...
I tore off my skin in the moonlight and became a seal, sleek
and noisy. One day a man put his arms around me, and
my arms and legs became tree limbs. It turned out I was
the enchanted princess all along,...
because I can no longer feel my feet.
Was it a trick of genetics or a magic potion
that made my fingers into feathers or fins
ready for a different kind of escapade?
My body is slowly giving itself away
from this universe. It...
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 spell gone wrong,
a stepmother’s curse, a swan nearly freed.
I recall being swallowed in...