I was spit out the other end of an arrogance high a confident saunter into adult separationas if peeling the dysfunction from my skin would lead to a cellular replacement  Now a renewed adolescentI yearn for the small angled reflective pieces of a dissolving (dys)funhouse No, you wouldn’t fit through the keyhole it’s made custom for my skeletal…

my strange claw-footedsovereign of the attic landing glass laying openyour filigree ribcage  a deco display casequiet as a casket protecting the proxies of people I’ve loved  an incomplete tea-seta coronation mug two model aeroplanesthree porcelain toads what heirlooms await you a Lladro figurineslender and gleaming a mallard-shapedpencil sharpener some old first editionI…

I dance through sleep while others dream the stars on their distant throneare nothing to me there will be no more stained glassno incantations I dance through griefwhile others mourn my tears are nothing to me I am no-one’s beloved  I am a ribbon whipping on the wind my feet are…

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…