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She liked the way I watchedthe redstart work the berryfrom the butcher’s broomand how I quieted my bodywhen the stoat poked itstwitchy whiskers from its den. She liked when Mrs. Trengrousepoked me with her hazel stickwhile I crouched to see the pearlson a fritillary feeding from a thistleso I didn’tContinue Reading

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In the darkness,women and childrenare wading in the water. I. Cebu, Visayan Sea When the imagination failsto discover a girl, Magdalena,scanning the tie linesfor clumps of swaying guso,the harvesting of which willschool her into lifting on moredistant, choppy, speculative seas. II. Gorumna, Droim Quay, Ceantar na nOileán Bríd Ní MháilleContinue Reading

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for Anna Laura Grace Elena The crushed rubies and sweet woodruff are Angelina, who died of her ninth bambino, making a bed of her memory for her two-year-old Laura who would see her mother’s ghost ever after on the landing, backlit by gaslight and need. The lapis lazuli and bluebellsContinue Reading

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A gorillazooed in a kindly habitatnot quite likeits mountained ownrecently cradled a fallenhuman infant, unused to heightsand jarred from its slipaway from mother’s arms.The gorilla, a mother herself, understood yowling when she heard it. She set the child before the keeper’s gate, assuming kindshould goimmaculate to kind,knowing the bandied creaturewouldContinue Reading

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She struggles to breathe in the icy air,gulping trouble and guile from voicesnot her own. She has learned to skate betweendazzlers and blunderers on the gridlockedcity rink, ankles burning with intent andtentative discovery of the sweetspot for equipoise, remaining mostly upright,steering into a valiant glide, knowinga fall is imminent, inescapablewhenContinue Reading

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This day limps and whimpersin a sudden mob of jeers and taunts.Remorse muscles in, blockingthe tease of possible lightwith a fuggy pulse of wayward,gravel-blind, monstrous self-absorption. This is the end of the worldand only imps and devils are afoot,the wrecks beset by iron-hearted lootersstealing movement from the air, invitinga tepidContinue Reading

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There’s a story in this, girls,and it doesn’t have any wolves in it for now, though you never knowwhat might come down the lane, in Neverland, especially nearthat mermaid bog of old. Which is the gateway toThemyscira, truth be told, though no one ever seemsto want to know where theContinue Reading

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II. One way of looking at itSever the notion of quest from bloodand you get girls, leastways if the bloodis othered and the quest is sticky withswords and snares, beset with spitefulnymphs and pitiless trials, fool’s goldguarded by dragon-fire, the road toilluminant decency – or what passes as –marked byContinue Reading

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So where are all the fools and fairies? Quince, you string the lights and rig the gauzy scrim. Titania, shimmer all your sylvan innuendo in and vary like an otherworldly whim or a thought before the sin. Rustics, do some heavy lifting within that copse of wizened, watching oak. ImproviseContinue Reading

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I crept up to him while he slept and studied the twitches his dreams made beneath his frail eyelids. He should have sensed my stare. Soon I knew if he was being chased by wings and needles, or if he was lost in a flailing bark inside the snapping prongsContinue Reading