Keeper and Hawk

Outside, herself again, effects of kill

and cure alleviated by the news,

she’s dancing early morning Braille grace notes

along the woodland ride. She pauses, high

on her consultant’s view, “Not visible,”

charmed by a ring-of-feathers fairy sign

against the broken stile. “Yon sparrow hawk,”

he answers to the question on her mind

as yet unasked; “her feeding post.” She knows

him from the local, captain’s chair, beer mug

above the bar; old gamekeeper, skin like

gnarled bark, wax jacket, corduroy, retired.

Whole different world,” to poison, trap or shoot

all compromises to his grand design:

I’d bide nest-side for hours, stock still. One day

she lighted on my gun, dark mantle, wing,

locked feet, mere inches from my gaze.” He peers

behind her fear-crazed eye and reads her pain,

admires her pulsing breast, life force within.

I let her be that spring. Next year? Lord knows!”

 
Peter Branson

Peter Branson has been published or accepted for publication by journals in Britain, USA, Canada, EIRE, Australia and New Zealand, including Acumen, Ambit, Envoi, Magma, The London Magazine, Iota, Frogmore Papers, The Interpreter’s House, Poetry Nottingham, Pulsar, Red Ink, The Recusant, South, The New Writer, Crannog, Raintown Review, The Huston Poetry Review, Barnwood, The Able Muse and Other Poetry.

Christina Borgoyn

human sky

tendrils of flaxen wind dance

unbeknownst,

 

billows & curls into incandescent

orbs, blinded-

blinks, and heaves open

 

the mouth and its million raindrops,

faint caress of song lingers, a heavy fog;

and shoulder blades beg to beat

faster

to the tune of flight, arms flail solo-

a slow push and legs swim

amid stratus

 

as naked moons peek toward a sunrise,

hail intensifying the mien.

 

holiness hurts

night and her mortifying

caress,

 

beautiful lightening-

I am lonely child

deserted and small,

 

insignificant to your power,

crouched without morning’s touch.

 

Christina Borgoyn

The Hours Between Our Feet

When you breathe,

I see the map materializing

like it’s a cold day in winter.

I pluck it from the air,

and I am finally able to hold distance in my hand.

It’s a delicate, beautiful flower,

though poisonous to ingest.

 

But when I set the flower on the road,

it blossoms into mileage⎯

millions of feet of choking vines

sprout between our feet.

And it occurs to me that you’re breathing

an hour into the future,

five away from me.

And I want nothing more

than to lie tangled naked in the vines

and swallow the distance

until it kills me

 

Sirenna Blas

 

Sirenna Blas’ short story “Maps & Men” was published in the 2011 winter edition of the Rose & Thorn Journal. Her poem “Paradelle for the Poet” won first place in humorous and satirical poetry in Purdue University Calumet’s Stark-Tinkham writing contest, and “The Sky Swallows Us All” won second place in their short story category. She is a freelance nonfiction writer, as well as a peer tutor at Purdue Calumet’s Writing Center.

Listed at Duotrope
Listed with Poets & Writers
CLMP Member
List with Art Deadline
Follow us on MagCloud