The huntsman’s clothes soaked through, pocket breast full of artery and aorta valveleaves a toubling stain like the jealous rage  of a queen who won’t let it go the wayshe, the thousand times more fair, lets her last breath go, alone in fox-infested forest—done with the in and struggle out,…

The world had changed. It was full of roaring noise.The sky was greyand her lungs achedwith the effort of drawing breath. Reluctantly her lashes liftedto reveal the hungry eyesof the man –dripping, dishevelled,strange-looking clothesaround his feet– who had woken her. Covertly he had crept closerto her limp bodyput a hand…

                                                                 Oh settle your tails and lift up your flagons                                                                 We’ll start a good fire and sing of great dragons                                                                 Of Rusty knight’s armor and fights in the forest                                                                 Adventures forgotten recalled by our chorus. How few still remember the Knight of TrafulgaThe time he attacked the green dragoness, Olga.She…

I don’t want to spend the rest of my life running down steep palace steps with a swollen ankle bound in glass and a shoeless foot, throbbing vagina, my evening interrupted by strokes of a clock whose noise tears the world in two // No, I’m devastated to be running away from…

          A Thessalian king who chopped down the sacred grove of the goddess          Demeter (Ceres) in order to build himself a feast-hall. Theoi Greek Mythology                               1.A many-turreted tree, sacred to holy Ceres,twig-fingers webbed with new green,prayer flags attached. But he will have none of that. For lumber and his empire, it will be dispatched. “Foreman, henchmen,…

Rooted atop a grassless hill existsA leafless, barkless cemetery tree,Its branches twist like curling witch-fingersPainting long, creeping shadows, aliveWith a flickering spectral-glow of black-Opal’d witches’ dust—floating mists of ghost-light—Capturing cold and lifeless flames withinThe deepening darkness of impending midnight              As the shadows deepen, the tree-roots awaken,                           Enchanting the hill with illusions…

I was brought here as a clean prisoner, stone walls and a corset stealing breaths from my lungs,whalebone carving my waist, wilting my ribs. The stranger husband with foreign skin a scarier topography than the new land our manor was rooted in. My arrival brought downcast eyes and the vigorous scrubbing of her portrait every…

Is that a strand of gray you see?      What does the mirror say, if not that you are  not what you seem to be, not what      you think? You are vapor poured into a vase, delivered      in smoke and sharp angles, a wolf  in bear’s skin, howling and hairy      sharp-mouthed, tongue-tied to another face…

Dumpty sat for hours listening                                     to the whispers of swallows in a dingle dangle dusk.          The mist was thick, his thoughts inconsequential. He sorted the best in the palm of his hand,                    and slipped the rest into his waistcoat pocket. Nothing of the moon was Dumpty’s concern.  Yet, she, too, was no sloven,…