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...
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 rows
where our old bones the cold earth slowly swallows.
Of certainty indeed no living person knows
and...
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 fingertips,
abalone crescents. I have been
told to chant words of protection—
cornstalk & eucharist. She says
I’ll think...
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 ocean
with a hook and a thread.
This is the life I wanted—a cottage,
no Prince Charming but...
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 the sounds of mushrooms
unfolding through fallen hemlocks? How to ensure
the advancement of each tiny...
Historic clothing created and modeled by Seamstress of Rohan.
Photography by Helena Aguilar Mayans.
Take a spoon, silver’s best, but any spoon
Will do, so long as it is old. It should
Be held in the left hand. Take it now, room
To room...
Photography by Courtney Brooke
Twenty eight broomcorn bunches in the center,
seventeen on the outside,
jagged bristles bound,
many years ago I would have just swept up Cheerios and glitter,
dirt; brooms were for cleaning.
Now Besom, you’re bound for riding.
Somewhen, I will cut the...
(for Jared)
The city: metal skins cloaking thin, high stairs
that step slyly to the side and flower into balconies
or turn and twist into spires, piercing the sky to
sip a heady blend of cloud and starlight.
The river: lapping stair-roots trailing from...