Three Drops from a Cauldron - Issue 15

Three Drops from a Cauldron Issue 15 May 2017 Edited by Kate Garrett Poems copyright © 2017 Individual authors Issue copyright © Kate Garrett

Cover image is (cropped from) ‘Stonewall Secrets’ by Lorraine Carey Image copyright © 2017 Lorraine Carey

Three Drops from a Cauldron Issue 15 / May 2017 Mother Goose by Denise Blake Butterfly Girl by Ann Malaspina Seduced from the branch by Katherine DiBella Seluja From Feathers and Blood That Fell to the Snow

by John W. Sexton Sibyl by Marion Michell Floodbed by Kaddy Benyon Balm by Shawna Michele Black Cat Luck by Dennis Trujillo The Greenwood by Iris Anne Lewis Mama Bear Responds by Wendy Mannis Scher Beast by Sue Spiers Orion by David J Costello

Mother Goose I promise you I will never bake a dainty pie full of four and twenty blackbirds who sing when I cut the pastry open with a large knife.

And I won’t use the same knife to cut off the tails of each of the three blind mice running madly around our farmhouse kitchen.

We’ll never live in a shoe, no matter how many children are around me in my old age.

If you are going to the market to sell our cow don’t be fooled by any tosh about magic beans.

But if a beanstalk started to grow in our garden I’d prefer if you didn’t climb all the way to the top.

It’s illegal to trespass in a house, even if the owner is an ogre. And if you do steal his bag of gold coins or his hen that lays golden eggs, it’s your own fault when the harp starts to sing and the giant gives chase.

Always stay on the right path, don’t go wandering in forests where witches in gingerbread houses stoke up ovens and Little Red Riding Hoods have gone astray. Be careful with your choices – a princess may be a beauty, but if you get a wife who sleeps on twenty mattresses and complains of being in pain from a pea, you are in bother.

We’ll say nothing about Jack and Jill up the hill.

Get a proper job. If you are a shoemaker, make the shoes, don’t expect elves to do it for you.

I know it’s sad that Foxy Loxy ate Chicken Licken, Henny Penny, Cocky Locky, Ducky Lucky, Drakey Lakey, Goosey Loosey, Gander Lander and Turkey Lurkey. but the moral is: don’t believe every story as true, even if they are all shouting that the sky is falling down.

Denise Blake

Butterfly Girl Long ago, in the rocky land below the Himalayas, mothers had no shawls to wrap their newborn babies. When the monsoon flooded the valleys, the rice farmers had no coats to keep the rain off their backs. The god Matai decided that he must teach someone to weave so that his people would not freeze to death when winter climbed down from the mountains.

A weaver needed to be hard-working and patient. Most importantly, a weaver must have an eye for color. At last, on the banks of the Lohit River, Matai found a girl named Hambrumai. While the other children played, she washed the pots in the river, scrubbing every last speck of dirt. Her fingers were long enough to unravel knots and to wrap threads on a loom. She already knew how to grind and boil the stems of plants to make colorful dyes. But Hambrumai was not perfect. She liked to be alone, and never shared anything.

Still, Matai knew she was the one.

Matai gave Hambrumai a simple wooden loom and showed her how to stretch the threads from one end to the other. He taught her to push the bamboo tube back and forth between the threads. Before long, Hambrumai’s nimble fingers moved like lightening. In the morning, the loom had just a few threads. By nightfall, the cloth flowed like the winding Lohit River. Yet she never let herself make a mistake. If the weave was crooked, Hambrumai ripped out the threads and began again.

People came to watch as the cloth grew on Hambrumai’s loom. They couldn’t help but reach out to touch it themselves. “Smooth as a mango skin!” exclaimed an old woman. They blinked at the colors. The pink was as delicate as an orchid. The blue was purer than the sky. The patterns reminded them of leaves, birds, and even the starry night sky.

“What’s that?” a boy asked, pointing at Hambrumai’s newest pattern.

“Silly, it’s a cobra waiting in the grass,” a girl said. “Can I learn, too, Hambrumai?”

But Hambrumai was too busy, and also too selfish, to teach the girl.

She did not care if anyone else learned how to weave. Didn’t Matai ask only her? Even so, the girl watched the loom carefully. Soon she, too, was a weaver, and so were her sister and her cousin. Their colors and patterns weren’t as

brilliant as Hambrumai’s, but the cloth was warm. As the nights grew colder, the people wrapped themselves in the new woven cloth.

Hambrumai did not want to share her own cloth. She kept it hidden in her cave. The pile grew higher, until it was like a gigantic rainbow folded many times. Hambrumai slept on top of it at night. In the morning, she pulled a heavy stone against the cave so that no one could get in. For, still, she could not bear to share.

One day, Hambrumai fell asleep at her loom by the Lohit River. While she slept, a porcupine crept into the cave. As he poked around the darkness, the giant stone rolled into the river, crushing Hambrumai and her loom. The broken loom fell into the cold water and began floating away.

The loom bounced over waterfalls and crashed into ravines. Bits of bamboo and string tumbled down hillsides, and onto the plains. When people saw the pieces, they picked them up and built new looms. Soon, they taught themselves how to weave. Mothers wove with their daughters, who showed their sisters. Sisters showed their friends how to make the seams strong and the edges smooth. Their cloths spread and grew. Soon they stretched all across India.

Then one day a boy in Hambrumai’s village saw a butterfly. “Look, it’s her!” he shouted. No, it wasn’t Hambrumai, for she was gone, but the butterfly’s wings looked like Hambrumai’s dazzling designs. From that day on, every time a butterfly appeared, people remembered the girl by the Lohit River who taught the world to weave by doing it herself.

Ann Malaspina Author’s Note: The Mishmis, an ethnic tribe originally from Burma, live in the remote Indian state of Arunachal Pradesh at the foot of the Himalayas. The women are known for their colorful woven coats, shawls, and other clothing. My story is based on the Mishmi folktale, “How Clothes Began,” collected by Verrier Elwin, a British missionary and anthropologist (1902-64) who lived with the tribes of India and wrote down their legends. The folktale is in his book, “When The World Was Young” (National Book Trust, India, 1961, 1996). Other sources also mention the Mishmi legend of a girl who wove the first cloth with designs that turned into butterfly wings.

Seduced from the branch to escape a life plunge deep within the loam threads of gold woven through her hair a girl with silver slippers and desire something to soothe the cool nights the ash and brittle tile something to declare no matter what the others lift the cloth and see no disguise but beauty the gold the gild the guilt drawn carriage he who calls you to the dance

Katherine DiBella Seluja

From Feathers and Blood That Fell to the Snow from feathers and blood · that fell to the snow my face became; as the snow fared less · I fared more, a form I gained; on the grassy jewel · of morning’s earth my mind awakened; and up I stood · all feathery self, my death forsaken; you can’t kill those · you’ve killed before and that’s a given; my footfall light · as the breathing wind from which I was riven; a head of hair · all peacock eyes on my head had risen; whence those eyes · swallowed the world, all hungry vision; all the birds of the air · singing as one was my decision; so the bird of blooding · that tore me down was thus forgiven; from feathers and blood · that fell to the snow i was risen; from feathers, blood and snow · i was risen

John W. Sexton

Sibyl Last she pawns her tongue, for coins and crumbs, belly a howling hollow; her books long gone, a copper for thick tresses.

Scooped, scoured homeland, stony bane: her throat sifts seeds of silence. She shades her eyes but signs seep like tears.

For years she scrimps, heaving with voice and verse.

Folks come, unshout their woes, the loot and litter of their souls, and ravaged faces soften.

Scalp bristling cold, she bears a bundle home.

She spreads stained cloth: out rolls a dull, brown, shrivelled thing, with raised blue veins and a diaphanous fin.

Her mouth’s a bony lair, where nothing lives.

Tuber, muscle, earthworm, stiff as a bell’s tongue she waits to feel it wake.

Marion Michell

Floodbed Your death gave way to water dreams: rising tidal giants, salt shelled leviathans crashing through broken sleep.

Unanchored in our clammy sheets, a pulsing undertow drags me out to sea, tips a hinge of rusted horizon to the peeking spire of a part-drowned church. Diving inside its bluewash hush, my sluiced ears note muted raven song. Somewhere in the upturned arkwreck of rafters, a shadow flits forth and back; drifts in pockets of used air to perch tempting as a shoulder devil, whistling a hymn through hollowed out bones.

Kaddy Benyon

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Balm I imagine my hurt in the shape of a bow and cross fingers pressed against the weathered grains of an ancient oak arrow at the enemy a spear to spurn the past and then I hear her, Artemis feel the shift of my arm toward a cloud filled sky release, she says it rains in droves along my eyes where healing blossoms

Shawna Michele

Black Cat Luck Sometimes while running in the pale-pink light of dawn, black cats cross my path.

Despite the myth, my fate on those days is bestowed with sublime gifts like when the little girl in the upstairs apartment practices the piano spewing notes of Twinkle Twinkle Little Star, compelling me to collapse in bliss. One black-cat day a stranger on the subway handed me my wallet which had fallen from my pocket the way a canary sometimes flies from its cage.

Another time when a black cat with a white patch dashed across my path, the pieces of a math problem that eluded me for days snapped into place. Now I’m enthralled when the talisman with black satin pelt shows itself. I bow in gratefulness.

Dennis Trujillo

The Greenwood Things happen in the Greenwood.

They always have, they always will.

Eleanor slipped out of her father’s castle and down the woodland path. Her dress, green as new buds, rustled as she brushed past trees and bushes into the Greenwood. Around her waist a silken sash, nun-white. A scarf, soft as the wool of a new born lamb, bound back her long chestnut curls.

The sun shone through the trees, dappling the path, enticing her, tempting her deep into the Greenwood. A young man, a feathered cap on his head, leather boots on his feet, came riding by.

What happened next is an old story, as old as the wood itself. The sash was untied, the scarf slipped off, the boots and hat discarded.

Spring turned into summer. Eleanor wore a new gown as rosy as the apples fruiting in the orchard, but no one guessed her secret. Time passed, another new gown, this time dark, dark as damsons plucked from the stalk.

One morning, when clouds bruised the sky with threats of winter storms, Eleanor crept out of the castle and into the woods. The rain beat down. She laboured and pushed. Sweat soaked her dress. She pushed and laboured. Then suddenly there it was, a slippery mass. Eleanor laid back and again laboured and pushed, pushed and laboured. The wind howled. A second baby slithered out. Twin heaps of russet leaves served as a shroud. Eleanor limped away.

Spring, summer, autumn, winter came and went. The seasons wheeled round six times.

Then voices, plaintive, plangent, floated over the castle wall. Eleanor stopped, listened to the treble voices and began to sing: Oh, bonny boys, if you were mine I would feed you fruit and wine.

The boys took up the song: Oh, mother dear, when we were born you left us dying and forlorn.

Oh mother dear, but heaven’s high.

This is the place you’ll ne’er come by Oh mother dear but hell is deep It will make you bitterly weep.

The boys’ voices faded away. Over the castle wall Eleanor could only see the woodland path leading deep into the woods.

Things happen in the Greenwood.

They always have, they always will.

Iris Anne Lewis

Mama Bear Responds You tell me my porridge is cold, and yes, it often is as it sets in the bowl while I make everything just right for guest, husband, child.

And yes, my seat may be too large, too deep and wide for you to fill without knowing the measureless weight all mamas bear.

But stranger, don’t you tell me my bed is too soft, too pillow-thick with the comfort I crave each evening—selfish clutch of sleep.

Wendy Mannis Scher

Beast His fists were bloodied fighting, matted beard, unkempt mane, manners lost in loneliness, in dirty clothes, the village cursed him weird for drunken rages, house a cobwebbed mess.

He stole the blacksmith’s girl and kept her slaved at first with threats to crush her father’s head.

The beast would grant her freedom from his grave if she would tame his home and share his bed.

She bore with fortitude the beast’s cruel ways and calmed him singing sweetly for a year.

She begged to see her father for a day – though doubting her return, he let her go.

His change of mind was strange to him, unclear; the compassion he thought he’d never show.

Sue Spiers

Orion Diamond sharp his studded sword scythes the sky to ribbons. Pleating a belt to tourniquet his torso.

And I’m sure his flesh flushes red with the ruby of Betelgeuse.

And I’m certain he lives.

A dying sun pulsing for a heart choking the sky with the spill from his nebulous guts.

David J Costello

Biographical Notes Cover artist Lorraine Carey, originally from Donegal, now lives in Co. Kerry. Her poetry has featured / is forthcoming in the following : The Honest Ulsterman, Vine Leaves, The Galway Review, Proletarian, Olentangy Review, A New Ulster, Quail Bell, Live Encounters ROPES and Poethead. Her first poetry collection From Doll House Windows will be published in May by Revival Press.

Writers Denise Blake’s poetry collections, Take a Deep Breath and How to Spin Without Getting Dizzy, are published by Summer Palace Press. She is a regular contributor to Sunday Miscellany RTE Radio 1. She does Creative Writing facilitation work in schools and with Adult groups. Denise is on Poetry Ireland’s Writers in the Schools Directory and the Irish Writers Centre mentor scheme. www.deniseblake.com Ann Malaspina has an MFA in Writing for Children and Young Adults from Vermont College of Fine Arts. A Pushcart Prize nominee, her poems have appeared in Gargoyle, The New Verse News, Exit 13, and other magazines. Her next children's book, about Nelson Mandela's fight against apartheid, will be published in 2017.

Winner of the Southwest Writers poetry award and twice nominated for a Pushcart Prize, Katherine DiBella Seluja’s work has appeared in bosque, Broadsided Press, Claudius Speaks, Connotation Press, Crab Creek Review and Santa Fe Literary Review, among others. Her poem, “Letter to my suegra from Artesia, New Mexico” recently won honorable mention in the Santa Ana River Review contest, judged by US poet laureate, Juan Felipe Herrera. Her first collection, Gather the Night, focuses on the impact of mental illness and is forthcoming in 2018 from UNM Press.

John W. Sexton was born on the moon to Irish parents in 1958. His most recent poetry collection is The Offspring of the Moon (Salmon Poetry, 2013).

His sixth collection, Futures Pass, is also forthcoming from Salmon. Under the ironic pseudonym of Sex W. Johnston he has recorded an album with legendary Stranglers frontman, Hugh Cornwell, entitled Sons Of Shiva, which has been released on Track Records.

Marion Michell is a London-based visual artist & writer who has exhibited internationally. Born and raised in Germany she moves between languages and media. Her work, both art and writing, is intimate and intense, lingers on thresholds. She is a graduate of Central St. Martins School of Art & Design/London. In 2015 she won first prize in the QUICK.SAND flash competition of the Berlin-based English language literary journal SAND with Cuffs & Collars.

Kaddy Benyon’s first collection, Milk Fever, was published by Salt in 2012. She was subsequently funded by Arts Council England to write her second collection, Call Her Alaska, written during a residency at The Polar Museum in Cambridge. Kaddy is currently editing Call Her Alaska, which is a contemporary re-imagining of Hans Christian Andersen’s fairy tale The Snow Queen. Many of the poems where written during a research trip to Northern Finland.

Twitter @KaddyBenyon Shawna Michele lives in Massachusetts with her three children. She has worked as a nurse in geriatric care for ten years. She practices and researches witchcraft and feels a strong connection to the elements, which arise frequently in her poems. You can find more of her writing on Twitter @Shawna__Michele Dennis Trujillo from Pueblo, Colorado, is a former US Army soldier and middle/high school math teacher. In 2010 he spontaneously began writing poetry not knowing where the spark came from. Recent selections are forthcoming or already published with Blast Furnace, Atlanta Review, THEMA, 3Elements Review, Three Drops from a Cauldron, KYSO Flash, The Quotable, The Sacred Cow, and SPANK the CARP. Iris Anne Lewis is a writer of poetry, short stories, and radio scripts. She has been successful in both local and national competitions, as well as being published in magazines and anthologies. She has been invited to read her work at the Cheltenham Literary Festival and Swindon Festival of Literature. Her writing is influenced by history, folk legends and myths, the landscape and the local community. Originally from Wales, she now lives in Gloucestershire.

Wendy Mannis Scher, a graduate of the Low Residency MFA program for Creative Writing/Poetry at the University of Alaska/Anchorage, lives with her family in the foothills west of Boulder, Colorado. Her poems most recently have been published in The Rise Up Review, Lunch Ticket, Sugar Mule,

and Shout it Out! Poems Against Domestic Violence. In addition to writing, she works as a drug information pharmacist at a poison and drug information center.

Sue Spiers lives in Hampshire and has one of her poems carved in a park bench in Romsey. She currently edits the Poetry Newsletter for British Mensa's Poetry Society. Her first collection is called Jiggle Sac and she's excited to be included in Best of British anthology published by Paper Swans.

David J Costello is a widely published poet. His prize in the 2015 Welsh International Poetry Competition followed his outright win in 2011. He was also a prize-winner in the 2015 Troubadour International Poetry Competition.

His latest collection, No Need For Candles, was published in September by Red Squirrel Press. www.davidjcostellopoetry.com

Previous Publication Credits ‘Seduced from the branch’ by Katherine DiBella Seluja was first published at Watermelon Isotope.

‘The Greenwood’ by Iris Anne Lewis was written on a course at Ty Newydd and first published in the course anthology.

‘Beast’ by Sue Spiers was first published in The New Writer, winner of the fairytale sonnet #118.