The Lonely Unicorn – Kristin Garth

 

A series, superficial cuts, the scalp,

angora goat, two budding juts of horn

are bound at one week old. A mane of talc

they tame and you are sold, filed point adorned.

 

A circus mythos man creates: a dance

of hooves, one horn, straight in a tent of red.

You shed a hundred sweaters life. To prance

you’re bred, be roses, oyster-cracker fed.

 

A scandal surgical that’s shooed away,

return to pasture, booed who did no wrong

All lights and legend, knows no other way.

Blueprinted beauty that cannot belong

 

Designed, reborn a show what would be shorn,

a goat does die a lonely unicorn.

 

 

Kristin Garth is a poet from Pensacola. Her poetry has been featured in Anti-Heroin Chic, Fourth & Sycamore, Mookychick, Moonchild Magazine, Occulum, Faded Out and many other publications. Follow her on Twitter: @lolaandjolie and her website: kristingarth.wordpress.com.

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November 14, 2017November 14, 2017 by foxglovejournal Categories: PoetryTags: animals, beauty, belonging, circus, creative, creativity, cuts, dance, FL, goat, Kristin Garth, legend, lights, loneliness, myth, poem, Poetry, return, roses, show, unicorn, US, writing Leave a comment

burning bright – Linda M. Crate

 

you wanted me to be seen not heard

to be a passive girl who hid behind

the beard of the sun and the skirts of

moonlight,

and to sit lonely perched on your pedestal

in the gilded cage of your love which

was really lust;

 

but i am the butterfly landing on clover

gentle yet still wild

refusing the confines and cages

of any net that would fall upon me because

i am not someone you’ll ever tame

where i prefer to be the butterfly i can also

be the unicorn or the wolf

 

i can be a harpy and a chimera

or the soft petals of persephone’s flowers

life is a matter of perspective,

and you refused to see the relevance of mine

rejecting what was not yours;

insisting that your reality must be mine,

too, but we were two different people looking

out to sea

 

you saw only dangers and threats

i saw only mermaids and love

wanted to swim beneath the jade sapphire

confines that knew no beginning or end

so deep they could understand

my intensity and depths but weak men

cannot handle the helm of strong women

we burn just a little too bright for their candles.

 

Linda M. Crate’s works have shown up in numerous magazines and anthologies both online and in print. She has four published poetry chapbooks the latest of which is If Tomorrow Never Comes (Scars Publications, August 2016). She is also the author of the Magic Series and two forthcoming chapbooks Wild Thing and My Wings Were Meant to Fly.

September 20, 2017 by foxglovejournal Categories: PoetryTags: bright, butterfly, cages, creative, creativity, danger, fauna, flight, flora, legend, life, Linda M. Crate, love, mythology, nature, perspective, poem, Poetry, sun, wild, wolf, world, writing Leave a comment

Rose Tinted Glasses – Susan Richardson

 

The experts say my disease is genetic.

It spreads across families without discrimination

and taps randomly on the shoulders of children,

condemning them to a life of waiting for

the world to become shadows and pitch.

 

I stand alone with my dying retinas,

cocooned in the muslin of a fading canvas.

I have searched for a family connection,

a blood born comrade in a life of darkness,

but they tell me there is no one.

 

As the years pass and my vision

careens down a steep precipice, I

remember stories of a paternal grandfather

I never knew; a good dancer with sensitive eyes,

who always wore rose tinted glasses.

 

He was only 32 when he died, leaving

my grandmother to turn him into legend,

and my father to fend for himself

against the grief of a broken mother.

The secrets of his blood are caged in mystery.

 

Did my grandfather pass down the

genetic code that chains me to blindness?

Are my eyes a reflection of his own?

I hold desperately to the idea that he is the link,

but in my family, legends don’t go blind.

 

 

Susan Richardson is living, writing and going blind in Hollywood. Much of her work focuses on her experiences as a partially sighted woman in a sprawling urban environment. Her work has been published in Free Lunch, The Old Red Kimono, Stepping Stones Magazine, Wildflower Muse, The Furious Gazelle, The Hungry Chimera, Sheila–Na- Gig and Chantarelle’s Notebook. In addition to poetry and creative non-fiction, she writes a blog called “Stories from the Edge of Blindness”.

September 11, 2017September 11, 2017 by foxglovejournal Categories: PoetryTags: blindness, blood, CA, creativity, darkness, death, eyes, family, grief, history, humanity, legend, link, loss, mystery, poem, Poetry, reflection, secrets, shadows, stories, Susan Richardson, US 4 Comments