The hollows in old bestiaries house living lion’s teeth that resemble a band of knotted women. During the time that rabbits with dogs’ heads chattered malevolent spells in fields not far away, the golden-headed women nodded together.
The achene skirts were woven to woodland floors and bound these witches in one place. In the pits of roped vegetation, dandelion-faced-zoophytes crept from between the folds of the skirts to watch the crones spit nettles into the open mouth of a forgotten, starving mymecoleon. In the spittle of the suffering ant-lion, the woven women bring forth gusts of forgotten bodies. A legion of men in serpentine shapes, wispy wihts of mounted soldiers, drift like smoke in the bowls of the trees.
Shearing off their flowering trusses, the knobbed prophetesses slouch toward their loch. Orange and brown leaves coat the surface of the filmy waters; liquid thick with forgetfulness. The ladies use their branch arms to gather them: a pile of fabric-foliage with strange properties. Using fish bones, they sew the leaves into armor.
Summoning the army of ghosts, the enchantresses trace their fingers into the burning shapes. They will the bodies into being. Poking their clawed nails into flora veins, they cloak each mounted brother with a suit of armor made from plaited leaves.
The rabbit dogs babble their chorus, but green leafed squalls of cavaliers have suddenly remembered their names.
Jane-Rebecca Cannarella
Jane-Rebecca Cannarella is the editor of HOOT Review, a genre editor at Lunch Ticket, a cat lady, a contributing writer at SSG music, and a candy enthusiast. She received her BA and M.Ed from Arcadia University, attended Goldsmiths: University of London, Sarah Lawrence College, and is an MFA candidate at Antioch University. When not poorly playing the piano, she chronicles the many ways that she embarrasses herself at the website www.youlifeisnotsogreat.com. She occasionally drinks wine out of a mug that has a smug poodle on it, and she’s not wonderful at writing in the third person.
Artwork: Natalia Drepina
Website: http://nataliadrepina.deviantart.com/
Gingerbread House Lit Mag 