MAN FROM LA PAZ Poem by Jill Munro Illu stration by Shauna Mckeon
Last night I knitted a Bolivian. Or was it a Peruvian? It doesn’t really matter. It was proper knitting not the peg-peg-peg of hooking a French dolly but the click-clack of metal needles in the purl-one-row, knit-one-row of Bolivian stocking stitchery. I started with the tip of his hat − snaked stripes, Ikat squares over flap-covered ears made him a squashed nose, button-hole slits for eyes, a pinch-pursed mouth , a centre-parted mane and further down his poncho grew, flowed long and woolly wild as pinks and silvers met Inca gold. Skinny brown legs dangled from my needles until shoeless I cast him off. Later I found him sitting on my bed playing his Bolivian pan flute, pressing warm fingers to my dropped stitch holes. He paused his music, licked his fuzzy lips, murmured Desnudarme, desnudarme... as we began to unravel.
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THE WITCH AND THE WOODS Fla sh fic tion by Ana sta sia Gammon Illu stration by Denise Gallagher
There were once two lovers who were forbidden by their families to see each other. Every night, while their families slept, the lovers met in the woods outside of town. They did not know they were being watched. A witch lived in the woods. She watched the lovers meet day after day and heard them talk of their love for one another, of how they longed to always be together there in the woods, never to be separated again. The witch came up with a plan. The lovers were scared when the witch first appeared. But when she told them she knew a way they could be together forever they listened. The two lovers gave themselves willingly to the witch and to the woods. The witch turned the lovers into trees: tiny saplings at first but soon they were the tallest trees in the woodland that grew vast around them. The two trees grew so close together that their roots crossed under the ground, their branches twisted into knots, pulling their trunks into one gnarled mass, until no one could tell where one tree ended and the other began. Over time, the witch’s kind intention was forgotten but her actions were not. They became as twisted in the telling as the branches of the lovers’ trees. The townspeople warned their children not to disobey their parents, lest the witch turned them into trees too. But even these tales faded with the years. As the trees grew larger people talked less and less of the lovers who disappeared. The witch became nothing more than a scary story whispered over campfires and the two intertwined trees became only trees. But the lovers never forgot what the witch had done for them and the witch never stopped caring for the two large oak trees deep in the woods. One day, a boy came to the woods. He loved a local girl and to show his love, he promised to carve their initials into the bark of the lovers’ trees. He did not believe the old story he had been told of the lovers and the witch. The boy pressed his knife to the fused trunk of the ancient trees but before he could break the lovers’ wooden skin a scream rattled the leaves all around him. The boy fell back and was caught in the vines of the ivy that protected the trees. The boy’s feet searched for purchase on the soil below but the vines only wound tighter around his arms, his legs, crushing his chest. He pulled one hand free just as the witch appeared between him and the trees. The boy lashed out at the witch, drawing blood with his knife. At the drop of the witch’s blood, the two old trees groaned into animation. Their branches snapped as they reached out to grab the boy. They dragged him down into the dirt, among the moss and mud, until he was buried far beneath their roots. The lovers had learned to protect themselves. It was their turn to protect the witch.
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BABY ELEPHANT Fla sh fic tion by Farhana Khalique Illu stration by Jake Williams
Baby Elephant is trying to sit in my lap again. I groan and uncross my legs and she half rests, watching me. I run my hands over her parchment skin, a palimpsest of grey. Her watermelon head is as hot as desire. I tickle her parachute ears. We sit like this on the shadowed plains of my room. She won’t sleep. Instead, she gets up and trumpets at the moon, threatens thunder, tiny tusks tear pin-pricks in the sky. But I’m stuck. She’s the one who pulls me out. She dips her trunk and sprays me with water, nearly drowns me, before she brings me back. Get on with it! say the whites of her eyes. She ignores my shivers. She stamps her feet, spanks my hands and blows in my ears, until I pick up my pen. Only then, she retreats to the sofa, her breath cools and her eyelids smoulder. Even when she dreams, her tail swishes and sweeps the letters across the margins, onto the lines and into words. I grab her floating ghost and colour her pink, a candy floss paper weight, a sugarspun raincloud. The sweet heaviness of her feet rumbles across her airy playpen. The pages will grow slowly, like her. Moodily, like her. But one day, those legs could be tree trunks, a forest. For now, her smiles warm the seeds in my brain. And something takes root.
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THIS IS…UNE XPEC TED Poem by James Sapsard Illu stration by Jack Snelling
I don’t wish to disrupt your unenviable, frenetic schedule. you are beauty beyond imagination and I love you. will you marry me? why are you standing there looking so surprised? we can watch sunsets and boxed sets together in a daze of nights and sweet bountiful afternoons. we will travel the world climb mountains and volcanoes again. I will hold you gently amid the confusions of this impatient world and our kisses will nevermore be secret. we will sip from the same glass, share the same thought, lick the same plate. oh hello, just asking your wife if she’d like another drink, a divorce from mundane unnecessity and a second beautiful baby with me.
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