Steamfox by Adrian Exile
Floating by Swan I float in the river, threads of green vines twined around me, Twigs and foxgloves laced in my hair. If I drown perhaps I will grow gills, silver slits. A truck cornflower blue pulls over to the side of the road. A man casually scoops up a little girl with pigtails tied with red ribbons. She has no name now. Fish stare at me with flat eyes like silver coins. They place coins on the eyes of the dead. But I am something else. The princess dreams of spinning wheels that bloomed like asters, Fingertips pricked, guppies swimming beneath her eye lids. No one will find her. The truck is now only a blue jay on a road ending in sky Surrounded by the shivering weeds.
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Choice
by Swan The girl in the mirror says "no", her mouth a cavern where fish pale as the ending sky swim. An apocalypse is alway happening stars spinning into mollusks of prickly radiance. But she is a young fox not comfortable with answers. She prefers questions that shiver and wind like snakes waking from ice. The girl staring into the mirror knows the darkness before time, ice and fire. Kali digs her fingernails into her face, blood red lilies bloom tempting the alabaster fish, guppies paler then the irises of their eyes. Kali tastes of her consort who once entered her as a fox. The fox girl says "yes". |