New Poetry: Verse + Two Prose Poems

Back to poetry today on Grievous Angel and we have three poems (two of which are prose poems) in total from three writers. The debate about the boundaries and distinction between prose poems and flash fiction is a topic for another day...

• We start with The Likely Failure of a Marriage, a fantasy piece by Marge Simon. Her works have appeared in venues such as Strange Horizons, Dreams & Nightmares and she has won several Stokers for poetry collections.

The Likely Failure of a Marriage

The wife and I have double sinks in our bathroom. It was her idea, and we paid well for the renovation. I don't find it a welcome thing. I can see her every morning as she really is, without makeup, baggy-eyed, preening her oily feathers right beside me while I pluck the locusts from my moustache. When she watches me remove the leeches from my neck, invariably one of them falls on the floor. This always causes an argument.

• Next, it is the turn of New York writer Lorraine Schein with our second prose poem of the day Ultimate Feng Shui. Lorraine's work has appeared in Strange Horizons, Hotel Amerika, Mad Scientist Journal and elsewhere, and recently in the anthologies Phantom Drift, Wreckage of Reason and Drawn to Marvel. Her poetry book The Futurist’s Mistress is available from www.mayapplepress.com

Ultimate Feng Shui

She hired a Feng Shui specialist, and did all he said. She moved her bed and desk away from her door to face more favorable directions, hung mirrors and chimes to misdirect bad luck, added plants and installed small fountains of water to increase cash flow, and painted her rooms in different colors to attract chi.

Finally, all was in place - there was nothing left to do. She went to sleep in her new, perfectly aligned apartment. 

When she awoke, she found herself outside on the pale square of ground where her building had been.

Everything had been so perfectly positioned that it had ascended to Heaven, where it belonged, leaving her behind - aligned with nothing.
 
• Finally, it is over to Arizona writer Beth Cato with suddenly, a unicorn. Beth is the author of THE CLOCKWORK DAGGER, a steampunk fantasy novel from Harper Voyager. Her website is www.BethCato.com

suddenly, a unicorn

steps into the headlights
white coat set aglow
horn a perfect golden spiral
mane matted by brambles
his head turns to face
 
the car as you slam on brakes
vicious gush of the airbag
crunch, dust, blood trickles to lip
windshield rippled like 
stones in a pond
 
smear of red across the glass
you stumble outside
the unicorn is gone
a few white hairs snagged on shards
you call home: "I hit a deer."