They said I should have loved a crane wife, her bleeding
out in snow, onto ivory ice, I would give her my cloak and
she would be the female Christ, her blood stain my kimono,
and as I carried her home to rice paper walls, on bent back,
she would sing the sister stars down, and those souls departed
would flock around me, and I would know something of the afterlife,
offering up my pain and beauty to death, and as her wings married
my mind and marred my pain stains into something quixotic, I would
quicken, and Hell would have no place in my palace, and I would make
a thousand like her, all for one wish of peace, after Hiroshima bombed
me quite starstruck and desolate, and the grave of the fireflies wept.

They say I should have loved a crane wife instead.
But I became the bank of winter she drowned in, you see.
And I would never steal feathers or clip the wings off a bird.

We let our greatest potential go, and in that, grow.

Love is not the answer. The answer is a frozen rose.

Hope is not my delight. No, it is sacrifice.

And as the crane flies free, I am left flying kites,
looking up at the clouds, and dreaming of redemption
found at bitter beak and angel lips, and a thousand
other

impossible

things.


Allister Nelson is a poet and author whose work has appeared in Apex Magazine, The Showbear Family Circus, Eternal Haunted Summer, SENTIDOS: Revistas Amazonicas, Black Sheep: Unique Tales of Terror and Wonder, FunDead Publications Gothic Anthology, and many other venues. Her most recent publication, "The Tobias Problem," was just nominated for a Pushcart Prize at Freedom Fiction.

Where the ghost went, I followed,
through rooms and corridors 
of my own house, but all unfamiliar
as my footfalls trailed a spoor of silence.

Out into the full-moon night, we travelled,
across the mists of lawn, 
feeling less human with every step,
no mind, no body, no anything.

To the graveyard. Where else?
A stone sleeping in the soil. 
A name carved with no other purpose 
than to enlighten me.

A greeting from my own passing
hushed amid tall grasses.
No great welcome in those eyeless sockets.
A life unwilling but a death in charge.


John Grey is an Australian poet, US resident, recently published in Sheepshead Review, Stand, Poetry Salzburg Review and Hollins Critic. Latest books, “Leaves On Pages” “Memory Outside The Head” and “Guest Of Myself” are available through Amazon. Work upcoming in Ellipsis, Blueline and International Poetry Review.