Category: nevermore (Issue No. IV)

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

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

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)

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

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]