Work — Sandra Guy

North

Black cut out owl. Silver heart for a hole in the chest where a heart should. Bind a black feather with wire holly crack greening the cartil pulled from a Hyacinth fading…

Poetry AdultAllie AstellDecember 9, 2019North, Poetry, Owl, Feathers

She

She is dead, her face a tiny moon – pallid and yellowing, her mouth a bruised plum…

Poetry AdultAllie AstellDecember 8, 2019Family, Death, Poetry, She

I set out the stones

I set out the stones in a circle, arranging them from the North, not in order of size, or colour or even shape but as I felt you must have lived them…

Poetry AdultAllie AstellDecember 7, 2019Death, Poetry, Feathers, Circles, Set out the stones

Rowan

Starker than the pink of a laboratory rabbit’s eye the rowan is warning me. I made a mound to your memory, a circle of berries set in a garden of ash.

Poetry AdultAllie AstellDecember 4, 2019Grove, Trees, Poetry, Family, Rowan

Room

Was it the thigh-high boots tossed to one side, the two glasses in the sink with two plates and endless serving bowls, platters, jugs and trays that so unsettled me?

Poetry AdultAllie AstellDecember 4, 2019Poetry, Relationship, Room

The Owl Service

If there’s a heart of heather woven with thyme, rosemary, sage and broom there’s the tight tiara perched on her head by the hands of the man who made her.

Poetry AdultAllie AstellDecember 4, 2019Blodeuwedd, Goddess, Celtic, Owl, Poetry, Owl Service

Mistletoe

Aloft in the branches of a wintertorn oak sole in my swaddled kingdom. No one to take of my luminous berries. My brinewater babies, blanched white and plump that I offer to the sultry sky.

Poetry AdultAllie AstellDecember 4, 2019Mistletoe, Mythology, Grove, Poetry

Salix Nigra

I have left prayers on squares of silk tied to your branches; whispered over water. Desires that burn my tongue and womb.

Poetry AdultAllie AstellDecember 4, 2019Wilow, Grove, Poetry

Margrét

I wanted to photograph you, in every hot spring in Iceland. Catch water drops clinging, to the opening of your pores, as if your perfect flushed skin, were the very promise of life.

Poetry AdultAllie AstellDecember 4, 2019Poetry, Relationship, Margrét

Grandma Clay

She’s a Chinese-styled tomb memory. Made in a thunderstorm. With a cup that never stays cupped in her hands. But tilts the way her head inclines. Coquettishly over one shoulder.

Poetry AdultAllie AstellDecember 4, 2019Family, Grandma Clay, Poetry

Emperor Wen's Butcher

Slit open the skin, Emperor’s best butcher, in that space between sinew and bone, you’ll find the ghost girl tethered.

Poetry AdultAllie AstellDecember 4, 2019Ghosts, Emperor Wen's Butcher, Poetry

1 b Avenue de Paris

I had come to anticipate, the notes he left on her door, the dry authoritarian tone, that never let her forget, his role as progenitor of her life…

Poetry AdultAllie AstellDecember 4, 2019Family, Neighbours, Poetry, 1 bis

Becoming

I am not yet born. But if I were a flower I would be a lily blazing fuchsia. My perfume permeating heaven…

Poetry AdultAllie AstellDecember 3, 2019Cerridwen, Blackbirds, Goddess, Celtic Mythology, Becoming, Poetry

Saviour

I think you think I can save you which I probably can't, though it's nice to have power recognised as a life or death affair instead of being categorised by the car you drive…

Poetry AdultAllie AstellDecember 3, 2019Power, Relationship, Poetry, Saviour

Craft

Those fine fingers that crafted, carved, loved & blew my soul into being could not open this heart enough to feel, breathe, be…

Poetry AdultAllie AstellDecember 3, 2019Fertility, Relationship, Poetry, Craft

Peace

I had imagined Peace a woman. Tall and cold, marble-refined slender hands held in elegant lap, an expression of uncompromised calm…

Poetry Teen & ChildrenAllie AstellNovember 1, 2019Teen Poetry, Peace, Lines in the Sand, Crossover, Poetry

Evening

Evening listens to my music, scraping her ear against the window…

Poetry Teen & ChildrenAllie AstellNovember 1, 2019Children's Poetry, Evening, Pocket Poems, Bobbi Katz, Poetry

Grandfather

Ghosts, I am told, like to surprise the living with smells sometimes cloyingly sweet lavender, honeysuckle, rose. At other times it’s rotting leaves. The stench of ectoplasm they can’t control that seeps…

Princess Mononoke, Mark and Me

“A man only needs three things to be a hero: a sword, a story and a girl.” Mark rolls his eyes. “Not every hero fights for love, you know.”

Short StoriesAllie AstellOctober 31, 2019Teen Fiction, Crossover, Love, Anime, Heroes, Storytelling, Princess Mononoke

Blood Month, 1979

The world doesn't stop when someone dies. You want it to. You damned well pray it will. But it doesn't. It just keeps going.