July 2011 | back-issues, poetry
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.
July 2011 | back-issues, poetry
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
July 2011 | back-issues, poetry
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.
