Seraphine Saintclair, Keren Dibbens-Wyatt, Emily Tee

BRINGER

Keren Dibbens-Wyatt

There will be no murder today, for the crow sits alone darkly, brooding her solitary magic. Her flight, when it is full-feathered and ready, will cast a freeing shadow, and only where it is most needed. Where the world cries out for life, the stork and the dove will visit. These are wings of a different kind.

The glade in which she now gloams has become a spiral, the wrinkles having spread out from the feet of her kind as they moved in mysterious waves over centuries. The snails pave the way, leaving the shattered pieces of themselves as a reminder, a nacreous epitaph in wild intangible words, a pearlish poem. This fiddlehead shell has stayed furled for aeons and so it will remain until the end of days. It is not for this one bird to tap that, nor to singcaw here, as she stand at the zero of the sequence in reverent awe, gathering the ravenous mantle around herself. Soon it will be time to soar, to cover-shelter, to heed the soft cries of those in pained prayer, to scatter a midnight blessing of peaceful ends.

CORBIES

Emily Tee

a Golden Shovel after Carl Sandburg’s River Roads

we walk a wintry path amid late grass bent nearly flat, let

the trail take us where it will, meandering among the

bushes, spindly now, the skeletal trees, crows

roosting on the bare bones of brown branches, go

farther along this track that’s familiar yet not, worn by

so many footfalls, ours among others. The birds, hawking

their presence, garrulous, somehow comforting, their

sound a strand of thread tied to other times, caw

a common prayer from graveyard’s tall trees and

a conjuring of countryside, transporting with caw

to ridges and tussocks of sodden sheep fields. They

alight then lift off, the crows, encircle us. We have

become part of their domain, somehow, we’ve been

woven into this landscape, large specks swimming

through the damp, dank grassland that's drowning in

snow melt and rainfall. The crows’ wings are midnights,

wet black feathers flow like a dark wave, a billow of

smoke as they wheel and gyre, plumage with a coal

sheen brilliance, the kind of black that glints in mines,

split rocks’ iridescence. They’re above us, somewhere.

[Previously published in Poetry Scotland Issue 106, October 2023]

ART SINGER OF LOST MYTHS by Seraphine Saintclair

Seraphine Saintclair is primarily a poet, singer/songwriter and photographer but she enjoys creating in other mediums as well. In her work, she especially loves to explore the worlds of her emotions and the mystical. Her work has been published in The Winged Moon Magazine, Midsummer Dream House Magazine and Voices of Rebellion Magazine. She has also self-published six books of poetry and is working on new poetry collections, as well as an album of music, a novel, and multiple projects involving her photography. On Instagram she is @seraphinesaintclair

Keren Dibbens-Wyatt is a chronically-ill Christian contemplative, writer and artist. Author of the books Recital of Love (Paraclete Press, 2020) and Young Bloody Mary (Mogzilla Books, 2023), her writing features in literary journals and anthologies (Fathom, Amethyst Press, Linen Press, Orchard Lea Press, Acropolis Journal), and on spiritual blogs (The Redbud Hyphen, Awake our Hearts, Contemplative Light, Godspace).

Emily Tee writes poetry and flash fiction. She's been published online and in print in a variety of places including Dreich Mag, The Ekphrastic Review, Whale Road Review, Unlost Journal, Roots Zine and Poetry Scotland as well as several anthologies. Emily is the editor and judge of The Wee Sparrow Poetry Press's monthly ekphrastic challenges.