Once upon a time there was a prince as ruthless as he was beautiful, whose callous acts forced his parents to lock him away in a chamber deep under the palace so that he may never assault those above. This decision was not made easily, for the Prince was so charming and fair of faceContinue reading “The Prince and Winter Rain- a fairy tale”
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The Brackish Lord
The sun ate the sky as if it had starved for a millennium, cutting the afternoon into slithers of topaz semi-darkness. “I will not kill a dragon,” said the Prince, to the elf-witch, as they approached the cavemouth by the sea. “If that is what lies here, then we will leave this quest to someContinue reading “The Brackish Lord”
The Prince And The Fortress
The villagers had told the Prince that there was a tower, and indeed there was, a phallic spike of black stone cocooned in crimson thorns. It thrust up from the valley at the bottom of the great hill like a clenched fist, a silhouette in the rain. The Prince, whose name was Sy, put aContinue reading “The Prince And The Fortress”
Lucky Penny
The witch in the well would take your life for a coin, or so everyone in the village used to say. As a boy Jack hadn’t believed it, filing the story away with Bloody Mary and Jenny Greenteeth, and every other urban legend he could think of. But now he was twenty-eight years old andContinue reading “Lucky Penny”
Knucklebone
we’re all looking for someone in our livesgrasping at the wrong shoulder in the darkand holding on with grim-jawed stubbornnessas the one we want observes us and sighsand opens a newspaper for the waitlong and white and as clinically coldas a hospice corridor; its lights blinkand the water in the cooler is stale,and swims withContinue reading “Knucklebone”
The Beauty In The Bell Jar
I wake with a skull-biting migraine around midday, as always, forever too tired to greet the morning. My mouth is as thick as linen, and I wouldn’t get up at all if the wardrobe weren’t so eager to dress me, which she does, in blue and white, like the habit of a nun I onceContinue reading “The Beauty In The Bell Jar”
His Sonnet
where did I walk before I knew of you?a haggard Earth, black soil, frost-eaten planes?some other nameless planet just as bluea moon with love nor colour in its wanes?what ash did I consume when you weren’t mine?few bites I took sustained that did not cloyfruit was but pulp, and water naught but brineand yet aContinue reading “His Sonnet”
Stiltskin
It was there each day, that monster, each day and every night, an old thing that had felt the pitted hole in me and settled there, like rot in the hollow of a old tree. At once it had fed off my veins, drinking the fat and the liquor until I couldn’t stand upright withoutContinue reading “Stiltskin”
That Afternoon
it was a bare and barren nobody,that afternoon, wet air and sodden earth the razed umber of a firebird’s huetrod in by wading footfalls, and the sunbored through the trees a red and dripping holelike a gunshot, bruising the sky yellowand the moist clouds, dragging their crumbling tails,drew words and features long-condemned to fadebefore theyContinue reading “That Afternoon”
Old Clothes
my old clothes don’t fit anymore I try them on again, sometimes, to seeif they flatter me still- there are daysthat they do, jarring as a flowerin the dregs of a nuclear ruin, and days that they don’t- I feel like oil on a blackroad, all thin-film and refraction:this dress I hoard, another given awaymakingContinue reading “Old Clothes”