Tony Longshanks LeTigre is a hackerspace infiltrator, parkour enthusiast, urban exploder, disseisor, tosher, magick practitioner, amateur seismologist & general misadventurer currently attempting to escape from San Francisco, CA.
On Nick Flynn’s Pulse (Hidden Bird)
“Imagine a glass of water / a drop of blood”
Imagine the infinite swelling of waves, bruised mornings, nights written in
A long forgotten language: the constellation dance, echoes, rippling
Glass of the frozen ocean. Alaskan bay. Bering Strait. Ridged reflection
Of fickle tides – the way the mouth’s roof quells the tongue.
Water, harried by lips and winter, has something to say:
A moment in such company, it would whisper if it could, would inspire a
Drop of rain to expand in concentric rings, engorge the tides
Of what could not be explained: why are we this / & not nothing
Blood welling from our separating bodies. Blood and salt, and beating wings.
Under the skull
of
a maiden
life is but a dream
once upon a time
Ophelia and Hamlet
met on
a
crimson
skin
Virginie Colline
Illustration: Ofelia tatuada by Diego Marmolejo, www.diegomarmolejo.com
The POTENTIAL IV: Staying True
Once upon a time, there lived a poor hunter and his childless wife.
One day, while gathering wood in the forest, the wife built a maiden
out of snow. “If only you were real,” she sighed, “how I would love
and treat you.”
The forest queen heard the wife’s wish. She promised to turn the snow
maiden into a real girl. But with one condition: in place of a heart,
she would have an icicle. With that, the maiden magically came to
life. “If she ever steps outside the snow forest,” the forest queen
warned, “the ice will melt, and she will die.”
For many years, the snow maiden and the wife lived together. Then one
day, the wife died. The snow maiden was sad. She moved through the
forest until she came upon a young boy from the village, lost in the
woods. Taking pity, the snow maiden led him to the edge of the forest.
If she walked any further, she knew her heart of ice would melt.
The snow maiden looked into the boy’s eyes and knew what she must do….
***
Air Raid
People scream as bombers fly
Above the city at night.
Fire and smoke fill the sky
As soldiers cry in fright.
Houses burn and windows crack
As bombs rain upon the town,
Smoke from rubble shifts to black
Tears from faces trickle down.
Women cry while children dead
Rot upon the broken street.
Soldiers look on empty beds
Firemen combat smoke and heat.
Raid is o’er, the bombing done
Peace for now, with cooling guns.
Review: The Roving Tree by Elsie Augustave
Leah Dearborn
The Roving Tree tackles an ambitious scope of issues and themes, from the damaging nature of internalized racism to the impact of heredity versus environment. Adopted from a small Haitian village at the age of five, Iris’ life often reads like an all-too-real fairy tale in a United States poised to enter the Civil Rights Movement.
Iris herself is a very sympathetic character. Forced to bear the baggage of a culture that isn’t even her own by birth, she nevertheless refuses to be victimized by racism. As a child, she’s confronted by many well-meaning (or less so) adults, but struggles to find a place among them. Although The Roving Tree is not the first book to describe such an incident, it’s still shocking when strangers touch Iris’ head without her permission, just to find out what the hair on “those people” feels like.