Nightingale & Sparrow

Category: nevermore (Issue No. IV)

  • A blinding

    A blinding

    Jane Dougherty

    I lock the door; the wind blows black this night
    through teeth locked in a rictus. Bitter glow
    of broken moonlight bathes the restless trees.

    Against the birds tossed dark and angry from
    the north sky, clacking bone curse in their beaks,
    I lock the door. The wind blows black this night.

    Key rattles in the lock, by unseen hand
    is turned. I have no will to move, and plead
    through teeth locked in a rictus. Bitter glow

    from bird-black eyes, the taloned fingers snatch
    and blind; the smell of blood, the stench
    of broken moonlight bathes the restless trees.

    Jane Dougherty

  • Dangers of the Trade

    Dangers of the Trade

    Mitchell G. Roshannon

    For many years now I have made my living creating joy from thin air, at a carousel. Giggling children grin at their mothers while traveling in circles on horseback. This may be the only time any of them set foot on a stirrup or saddle. 

    I have often wondered if there is something horrifically magical about all carousels, or if it is only this one. It’s an old carousel, horses carved in the 19th century entombed inside a protective building with a long sloping ceiling. Supportive bars push upwards towards a spade-like decorative hanger that encompasses the contrived internal structure. It’s much like standing underneath a spider. 

    During its day, the carousel was much to behold. “The last beating heart of an era,” it was called, beautiful and awe-inspiring with brass furnishings that sparkled in the sunlight, bright colors spun pleasantly. When the sunset and the brightly colored bulbs were all extinguished for the night, the darkness of the carousel allowed a different view. The horses’ eyes followed me and their mouths seemed to scream in pain, the reigns pulled too tightly. The carvings seemed almost sinister. That scene followed me to my dreams. 

    I dreamt of watching the carousel from across a covered bridge. The carousel was ablaze, spinning, and the screeching whinnies of hooved creatures echoed, the silhouettes licked by oranges, yellows, and blues. Some of them itched slightly and changed in position as if they were trying to escape. But they were still wood, their hooves still nailed to the floor for children’s pleasure. Children could be heard giggling, dreaded giggling at the pain of other living things for their own amusement. 

    The dark side of joy, I thought to myself. I meant to say out loud but in this world, my lips wouldn’t move, they were forced silent. I was meant to watch, not participate. The horses quickly turned to ash and a heart murmured, stuttered, and stopped. 

    I awoke. Drenched in sweat, I checked my surroundings and listened closely for whinnying. I heard nothing but the normal ticking of the clock on the wall of my small loft, placed near my bed to lull me to sleep. I remained up, drinking tea and listening to the Victrola until dawn. 

    “Just comes with the trade,” I said to the rising sun. I continued onto another day at the grandest of rides, the carousel.

    Mitchell G. Roshannon

  • Walls by the sea

    Walls by the sea

    Martina Rimbaldo

    Martina Rimbaldo

  • Winged

    Winged

    Olivier Schopfer

    Olivier Schopfer

  • Candle

    Candle

    Martina Rimbaldo

    Martina Rimbaldo

  • pillbox

    pillbox

    Britton Minor

    Britton Minor

  • After Ireland’s 1916 Rising, in England

    After Ireland’s 1916 Rising, in England

    Lavinia Kumar

    The grey stone prison was all was known
    of Dartmoor’s wild barren bogs,
    the mists where DeValera spent time
    deciphering political fog.

    He’d come in over Hairy Hands Bridge—
    hoped for help from faeries,
    but saw a man sink down with his horse,
    and decided to be leery.

    Indeed, faeries did come over with him
    to that dank moor in south Devon,
    where it was so hard to understand
    just one word out of seven.

    Faeries won’t leave Irish men alone,
    even gone to foreign lands.
    They guide, decode, trick and support—
    deal out a suitable hand.

    Those faeries let the prisoner know
    his fortune would keep on,
    that escape would not be needed now,
    to sit back, stop the moaning—

    a sound he’d hear come from coffins
    carried on the moor at night.
    The black horses spawned at a dark pool
    where hounds howled at a light.

    [Lavinia Kumar]

  • Mirages

    Mirages

    Mário Santos

    There is no far, nor distance. There is only the light that goes out
    in the darkness of your eyes.
    Suddenly we stopped in a kind of desert. We should feel the
    same sensation as the vegetables that fall asleep in the garden, in
    a contemplative universe, with no other characteristics, just
    contemplation. Here we are: standing in a dream, right in the
    midst of a dream, in the free and imminently spiritual ecstasy
    of those who fly over the plains, while we build roots progressively
    deeper under the lethargy of our feet.

    Mário Santos

  • a curse of opera (and love)

    a curse of opera (and love)

    Rochelle L. Harris Cox

    beside each other in plush darkness, straining,
    becalmed, they yearn for storm. he craves

    herosong and maidenswoon, the ghostly ship
    crossing the stage; she covets his bearded profile,
    hair in a viking tangle, through fear liquid as wine

    and gulped from the glass. i cried for the dead
    men singing, he says later, eyes shadowed by sails

    that tatter and flap like crows’ wings across axe-
    split pine. she will not listen to the bellows
    of warning bass and waning tenor, wanting

    only tears or words that do not fall for her.
    they long to taste that place where lips meet,

    the soft crease that catches saliva, dries it taut
    and white so all kisses sting of dark-sung
    curses. maybe tonight they will turn to each

    other: for dutchmen must sail until love anchors,
    until maidens pledge by shedding skin on stone.

    Rochelle L. Harris Cox

  • Night Insect Roll Call

    Night Insect Roll Call

    Cynthia Gallaher

    sweat bees chase, buzz
    me across a bluff
    on the Cumberland Plateau
    back to the sandstone
    reprieve of Rivendell.

    I may not be in middle earth,
    more at the south paw end of it,
    where I see four silent fruit bats
    weave like shuttlecocks
    on wefted reconnaissance

    for mosquitoes on the warp,
    those little vampires!
    which otherwise
    may have knit
    swollen anklets for me.

    I am too familiar with
    such uneven exchanges:
    blood letting for liquid itch,
    and none too soon, from my
    second-floor retreat,

    night deepens,
    as does the rustle and wave
    of a mass rally of integrated insects,
    which rattle and whisk the outdoors
    like curtains of falling sand,

    hold billboard-size stainless panels
    they wobble all at once in the dark,
    stamp tiny feet in a relentless march
    along wooded aisles of aluminum foil,
    usher a village of rain sticks shaken, not stirred,

    and rend percussion with hundreds of dried gourds
    and their thousands of desiccated seeds.
    window screens protect me from
    their overwhelming thirst
    from stalking my flesh after midnight.

    but as I fall asleep, am at one with
    their multi-voiced symphony
    and invite their asymmetrical rhythms
    to inspire a dream.

    [Cynthia Gallaher]