What makes a woman a howling banshee?The one you hear through your bedroom’s locked window at midnight,the tall woman,her body wasted by grief,gray cloak hanging limply on her slumped shoulders,her green dress, once a rich velvet,now covered in wispy silver cobwebs,her dark eyes sunken and red with tears,her pale skin a…

I thought someone mightlove me by now.I had that nightmare again-the one where Ihave forgotten my age;have forgotten the teethI spit into my hands.a boy I slept besidetold me he had dreamt it too-told me not to wish away time. ____________________________________________________________ McCaela Prentice is a Maine writer now living in…

The days now leave meshort of breath. A man is edging alonga guard rail on the Queensboro bridge.I have only ever seen the bedroomdimly lit. I have only walked here once.I drag my finger along the yellow linefor a stranger on the train.these are places I have been;that my time…

“So I shipped them all over here, every man, woman, and child in the Oompa-Loompa tribe. It was easy. I smuggled them over in large packing cases with holes in them, and they all got here safely.” Roald Dahl, Charlie and The Chocolate Factory  The Oompa-Loompa finally free, we litigate because of TV.  Smuggled in luggage breathing…

We keep sipping on crystalware, tumblers coffee mugs,pitchers, kettles – cafésthese days are creative withcrockery. You like blue andgreen colored drinks, I likepale stalks popping out ofmouths of wine bottlessplitting into tiny tendrilsbetween us – the pothos plantthrives on neglect. I keepforgetting to pick one up forthe kitchen, and you areundecided; forget me…

(A response to the novel by Markus Zusak) “Ahead of all parting” weighs 2 pounds, or 48 ounces, or 1360 grams, a single volume by Modern Library, new edition, 1995. Four centimeters short of an A4, thebrobdingnagian book, upon falling by a slip ofthe hand on the streets of Munich, blasts a…

A room sunken now and hollowed out,my bare feet rest on the cool grey clayof your plastered house, as bronzedbodies move in a dance of trowelsin the spaces where you once lived.  I am trying to decipher the peeling blood red fragments of your art, hunting for bull and deer, leg and…

Tell me of your life as I brush the dustfrom your eye sockets, carefully cataloguing your curving limbs. The way your body held itself, even in death. The way your bones dancein the earth, mud-stained,the expression of all your experiences. All you have loved and felt,all you have been, now fallen away. Sing to me softlythe last shreds of your…

At sea, adrift between worlds,one of terrorone of hope, we travel, nine hundred of us,borderless, in transit,from beating, burning, and a thousand indignities. But here, the mustached man’s portrait is flipped over;we try to forget what is and what might be,we try not to think about those left behind. With…

I tremble —there is evil about,specters and demons,but I must remain resolute,stand with the other magistrates and judges,all men of property and esteem,surely, we must be among the elect. This affliction has spread through the region,so many blackened with devils’ marks–though their blood is red(their master teaches them tricks). Accused,…