When she was a child they lived, Mother, Grandmother, and Girl, all in one house in the woods. Two small rooms, one big bed, three sets of ten toes wiggling…
The alchemist is turning himself into a bird laden with flight. It’s Wednesday and the caravans of shoppers pass through the procedural darkness, their faces soft stones whetting the light.…
Where I grew up everybody became a knife-thrower or else worked in the more bureaucratic parts of the traveling circus. There was a town nearby and towns all across the…
I wear the crown of faithfulness. Look in a dictionary for the word and there I am. So I waited twenty years for a husband who deserted me for the…
Sometimes when you wake in the night and hear the rain and the seaplanes going over and see their red lights flashing outside the window, the feeling is stored inside…
The ocean came for us, but only wanted you. I haven’t seen my brother since we were very young. He asked me how far I thought I could swim in…
The beast lived all alone in the tower, and she was monstrous. The tower was grown over with thorn bushes, in the center of a wild wood. From the tower,…
In times of old, young girls would bake cakes of flour mixed with salt and soot and eat it up, thirsty and love-struck, and if a man offers a drink,…
Most of your mix tapes are gone now, lost somewhere between the 1980s and today. Of the few that remain, one says simply “Salome Comes In—you can fill these in…
In a dream I swim, Pursued by a time chamber Of pink claws creeping And snakes that secrete bloodworms— Slim things ringed with mottled eyes. Karen L. George Author’s note:…