New Poetry by Beth Cato & Lauren McBride

It's the shortest day of the year in the Northern Hemisphere and, as we head into a long dark night, we've a selection of new poetry for you from Beth Cato and Lauren McBride, who've both previously appeared in the Angel...


At the Very Least
by Beth Cato

at the school for witches
every teacher
every textbook
echoed that there was no such thing
as a love potion
or any kind of spell
to change the heart
of the unwilling
yet Ava tried

the other girls teased
teachers rolled their eyes
as she unearthed musty tomes
from the library basement
shivered the dust
from fairy wings
for her spellwork
practiced her Latin
to memorization

when the spells failed
she turned to yellowed photo albums
old family cookbooks
diaries
happy memories of bygone eras

anything, everything
to make her parents
fall in love again

or at the very least

pause hating each other long enough
to remember their love for her 


* Beth Cato is the author of The Clockwork Dagger steampunk fantasy series from Harper Voyager. Her website is www.BethCato.com



By Lauren McBride

​
Supernova

for supernova
expeditions
critical to
correctly calculate
minimum safe distance


Hiking the Abandoned Road
 
The sound was like R2D2
or a meadowlark
back on Earth –
 
this alien bird
sipping alien flowers
in a truly foreign land


They Left
 
Their machines
carefully abandoned
 
in ordered rows
as if they meant
 
to come back
for them.
 
Frozen now
to the ground
 
with the death
of their sun.


He Said, It Said
 
"I gaze into your eyes,
expecting no love         
from wires and circuit boards"
 
//each time I see you,
my circuits light up
like neurons//


* Lauren McBride finds inspiration in faith, nature and science. She shares a love of laughter and the ocean with her husband and two grown children.