by Sandi Leibowitz
(USA)

spine grows soft like island pine;
ankles swell;
breath comes short;
blue vines of veins
trellis my trunks.

Filed under: Jabberwocky 14

by A.C. Wise
(USA)

There has always been a bordello here. It has been called a brothel, a whorehouse, a cabaret, and a temple, but in the end, it is always the same. It is always here. Here changes, the world shifting from forest to desert, city to sea, but the bordello remains the same. And I remain the same, inside it, and holding all its little deaths bound within my skin.

Filed under: Jabberwocky 14

by Helen Ogden
(England)

These are the joints that calcify us,
these are the curdled reins that rise.
These are the roots that tenderise
the fighting mass,

Filed under: Jabberwocky 14

by Sunny Moraine
(USA)

On the day of her wedding, the bride of the Scarred Utopian pulls her veil down over her face. She does this unassisted by her attendants, assembled around her in silence of the most solemn kind—this is a thing that she must do herself, her fingertips slipping over the intricate needle lace. She sees patterns of flowers and winding vines spiraling endlessly around birds in flight, leaping stags, wild hares, other creatures impossibly strange. Shapes that change forever, altering themselves the very instant she identifies their nature. She sees this, and then the veil is over her head, a vague white blur, and that is all she sees.

Filed under: Jabberwocky 14