by Deborah J. Brannon

About my wrist coils an army of souls,
spirited and calcite, a shivering constraint
of rage and patience, the tenacity of angels,
the compassion of demons, low-bent humility,
sharp shining hate and, most terrible of all:
Love.

I keep them safe against my skin,
smooth carven skulls pressing into my wrist
and their memories, ghost-frail, sinew-strong
seeping across pale flesh to eddy within my blood.
A cacophony of sensualist delirium … Read entire article »

by John Thomas Clark

At the well, you reveal yourself to men
in your hideous phase, ask for a kiss
and all save one refuse. You, withered crone,
ask him to lie with you. He says yes,
and at dawn, you, a ravishing beauty,
say you are Eire, in her every guise —
beautiful, at times, ugly. You apprise
him — he’ll account for raids and plagues — duty
comes with the kingship. Sovereignty Goddess … Read entire article »

by Sarah E. Colona

To say it was a dream would be a lie.
Always after the light was out, he came
To me, slipped out of the pelt and shivered
With each step toward my warm bed. Not a word
Between us — only flesh — its enchantments.

Sarah Elizabeth Colona is a recent graduate of George Mason University’s MFA program. Her poems have appeared in Six Little Things and Measure, an … Read entire article »

by Francesca Forrest

Songs were washing up on the shore
Smooth as sea glass, in greens and blues
We picked them up and held them to our ears
Like shells
And heard their wave-abraded tunes
Just faintly, faintly
We couldn’t catch the words

Francesca Forrest lives in a liminal place between a swamp and a town, where she enjoys reading and writing poetry and tales of the unusual.

Image: Siren, Sir Edward John Poynter, … Read entire article »

by Miranda Gaw

My husband is a labyrinth whose heart
tells time.
Like a signpost one hand points this way & the other that.

My husband keeps the time
in his two hands. One end is a faucet
shut off.

The faucet reduced to a trickle. The unicorn
reduced to a single spire.
Sense reduced to habit.

Our house glows amber. Outside in the dark
the devil is beating someone
Read entire article »

by Sonya Taaffe

The sleep-sipping ghosts flower above my bed: rotten dreams, stranded ore of nightmare; they smell of soured windfalls and standing water ice-crazed. Out of the wallpaper where it crackles from the plaster, the floorboards where the dust chills, they seep their own camphor level. Their dry ice dissolves on my tongue. Over the treeline, the parchment-brown skeletons flirt and curvet, swallow-sleek, autumn blue split between their bones—seals and mosasaurs, baleen whales, sea-things all, … Read entire article »

by Aurelio Rico Lopez III

The judge rapped her mallet twice. “Order! Order!”

Silence descended upon the courtroom. The judge rubbed her knuckles and sighed. Her arthritis was worse today. She’d been taking the steroids and pain meds that the doctor prescribed, but they hadn’t helped one bit. She often wondered if her doctor was really a qualified physician. Doc. That was his name. Just Doc. … Read entire article »

by Donna Quattrone

The first time I saw her was on the #22 bus heading downtown. She had her head in a book and I could tell that she was really reading, not just hiding from the world, or trying to escape from it. That’s probably what originally drew my attention.

She had on big glasses that were just now coming back into style. I have a similar pair somewhere in my sock drawer, from … Read entire article »

by Erin Hoffman

There was a castle on a hill
in my childhood;
       my father and I agreed that it was
       clearly inhabited by fairies.
Long into my wild years
I remember it against the sky—
spider spires eclipsing a palladium moon
rising grand and gibbous
       still bright with the breath of the sun.

The seasons passed
and I passed, too,
from that place—
but unlike … Read entire article »

by Thomas Zimmerman

Of course, the lovers are in lust, not love.
The forest, fairies, father-figures add
a dash of archetypal lore, above,
beyond the tug of blood and shadowed, sad,

obscenely whiskered id. With donkey-dick,
a rube can screw the Fairy Queen and weave
a dream that words cannot unknot. And sick
of rape and sack, a legend can believe

he’s won an Amazon, yet deeply fear
what she expects. Sex-hope can couple … Read entire article »