he prowls, primps,
wipes his fingerprints
on the glowing buttons of the jukebox.
new flesh, and
he’s

propping up the bar: hair tousled, boots
pointed, cigarettes bulking his pocket.
smoking kills, but so
do his cheekbones
in the light of a shared match.

his pretty words are a breadcrumb trail
right
to
his
bed.

Lord Feintheart, long may he rain.

BIO: Kirsty Logan won her first literary contest at the age of eight, … Read entire article »

The time they lose is not the same as mine.
No spell decreed they’d not decay with time
Like cheese and cherries, chocolate, even wine
That blackens to a sludge, drips free in slime —
No life but mold within this cage of mine.

Our clothes thinned out with heat, with cold, with rain,
Till wind cleared final threads to clean my frame.
Friends, family crumble round me, long past pain
(I weep in … Read entire article »

“Herr Grimm,” said the professor,
staring down the side-burned, half-cocked smile;
a man who knows too much, a German in modern fairytale.
“Und Sie auch, Herr Grimm.”
The brothers snigger behind their cell phones.

“Greta ate too much Kinder chocolate.”
The hallways, awash with rumor, foiled tongues:
the Grimms listen, tap out the stories on tiny keyboards,
placate the rumor-mongers and beg for more.
“Häns fell apart at the Pfeffernüsse.”

Outside by the … Read entire article »

After the single went silver, Dad bought us a house on the Jersey Shore, but he wasn’t there with us much because he had to go on tour. And every night, after I was supposed to be in bed, Mom walked to the beach in her nightgown and cried into the sea. My bedroom’s on the second floor, so I could see her from my window, and she didn’t see me because the light was … Read entire article »

The honeysuckle was blooming,
supporting the swollen sky
and twisting the fence
away from the wild
roses, thorns and barbs holding
the still and secret nests.

I wore shadows
and walked with regrets,
following the paths of ants,
searching for that luminous face
in the thunderheads,
in the puddles,
in every web and fleck of rain.

The grasshopper has fled
his fields of thistle and red clover,
gone before the long legs
of … Read entire article »

Much later, when she is a queen, she will remember it this way, and regret:

It begins with a breeze lifting tendrils of her hair as Eleanor straightens in her saddle, but she does not brush them away from her eyes. She must be a statue, immobile and perfect, before Catriona, the new handmaid. Catriona, who is not really a handmaid at all but a trumped-up goose-girl, the only servant the castle can spare … Read entire article »

All my clothes were smoke upon my flesh —
wisps of gazzatum from Palestine
or velvet from Kashmir, viscous on my thighs.
A princess, I was billowed through on cloth
with honeycombs of lace about my limbs,
and nothing coarse to callous skin and scrape
the body raw. I was a stranger to wool,
to flax, to hemp. Mystics prophesied
a linen noose would pull the night
down early over my eyes, so fires blazed
Read entire article »

I knew my elder sister would return
to sweep the ashes. She would part
sugar from sand, she would fill my mouth
with honey. She would bring shoes,
red ones with buckles. She would raise me.
I would be buried under the juniper tree,
I would be cooked in the stew,
I would be eating poisoned apples
and traded away for spinach,
I would be weaving nettle shirts
for my brothers till my fingers bled.
Read entire article »

“Your hair,” says Teagan.

I blush, glad of the confusingly dim glow of the candle in the Thai restaurant. I’m sensitive about my wild dark curls, at once glorious and unprofessional. Teagan leans forward. “You should always leave your hair loose, Shawanna.” He’s got a charming smile, bracketed by two deep dimples. “Like a princess in a fairytale or a play.”

The tom yum soup’s gone; the green curry pork and the larb … Read entire article »