Not one but five new prose poems for you!

For our latest Grievous Angel selection we have not one but five new prose poems for you? What are prose poems, you ask? They occupy a strange hinterland between conventional verse poetry, vignettes and flash fiction. They are one of my favourite literary forms. And they are notoriously difficult to define, save to say that you know one when you see one...


* Our first contributor, Rachael Clyne lives in Glastonbury (UK). Her work appears in magazines and anthologies including Poetry Space, Sarasvati, Domestic Cherry & Book of Love and Loss. Her collection, Singing at the Bone Tree (2014), won Indigo Dreams, Geoff Stevens Memorial Prize and concerns our relationship with the wild.  www.rachaelclyne.com


Home Cooking 
by Rachael Clyne

Houses are often silent, deserted. They hold their abandonment, like aged spinsters waiting for the knock of their carer, who breezes in with small chat, briskly raises a smile, then with swift wipe of flannel, steers her charge, too early, to bed. Sometimes they hang in rows like bats, swop gossip in the dark, with sounds beyond reach of human ears. Houses have anecdotes that need telling, ailments that need tending; they are social creatures, despite the secrets they guard behind walls.

Other times houses are hungry, chomping at the bit for cinnamon toast. Their cutlery rattles double-glazing, venetian blinds. Beware the famished intent of a 1950’s semi, its penchant for coronation chicken, stair rods, prawn cocktail and blancmange. Terraced houses desire parquet, caviar and pâté, while those in grandiose crescents long for plainer fare: rag-rugs, egg 'n' chips, mushy peas, baked beans. They possess no can openers but rely on their carers to provide. I once met a dairy-intolerant vicarage with a taste for sardines. Most of all they crave the sweet flesh of human, to roll around the tongue and swallow whole. They like to hoard them, stuff them, digest slowly over long periods then regurgitate. Houses often compete to see how far they can spit them out.



* Next up we have Zella Christensen, a Wisconsinite studying at George Mason University. Her poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in Strange Horizons, New Myths, and Mirror Dance.


Bus Stop Gothic
by Zella Christensen

Way before the sun comes up, there's a girl standing by the side of the road with two crows on a power line buzzing in the rain, which will freeze on the streets tonight, till in the slick black throat of fog, a car with broken headlights will spin, slide into a ditch
and stick nose-down in the snow with a driver too cold to pray, who can't find her cell phone or make the heater work, who will grasp the wheel until her hands are no longer hands – till they are hard as bone. Her car will jut from the snow where this girl is now. A wind comes up, and her coat blows back like wings. She stares west, away from the place where the sun will rise. You wonder what she's waiting for.



* F.J. Bergmann writes poetry and speculative fiction, often simultaneously, appearing in Dreams and Nightmares, New Myths, On Spec, Quantum Realities, Silver Blade, and a bunch of literary journals that should have known better. The editor of Star*Line, the journal of the Science Fiction Poetry Association, and poetry editor of Mobius: The Journal of Social Change, she frequents Wisconsin and fibitz.com


The Doorman
by F. J. Bergmann

That poem was a revelation; it really opened a door. You descend from the limousine onto the mandatory red carpet. When you approach the threshold, the poem stands there attentively, gloved hand on the crystal doorknob, gold braid on its epaulets. It smiles and waves you onward, with a genial nod. You step through onto the rocky promontory, shading your eyes with your hand and squinting against the glare. From far below, you hear the crash of waves, a foghorn, seabirds, lobsters singing. Out there, something is moving its tremendous flukes.



* Now over to N.M. Farr who currently lives in northern New Mexico, and writes music and fiction, and gardens.


Pocket Full of Fingers 
by N.M. Farr 

In walks the foxy lady with a pocket full of fingers. She says the fingers point her in the right direction when she gets confused about where to go, what to do, when to turn the page. She pulls out a finger to help her find the way. She’s a regular at the local book store, and loves to sit in the orange velvety chair by the window and read mysteries. Her hands in tact, each well equipped with five healthy fingers, yet when time to turn the page, she pulls out one of the fingers, usually the thumb, from her green grass smock pocket, to turn the page. 
     
A customer saw her do this one Sunday afternoon, and the customer shrieked, “Wow. Is that a fake thumb?” 

The lady said, “No. This is Jesus’s thumb.” 

The customer said, “That’s gross...and sacrilegious.” 

The foxy lady with feathery long lashes looked up at the customer, then sighed and gazed off into the distance beyond the glassy window, beyond the buildings across the street, beyond the tree tops, beyond the glare of the sun, deep into the summer blue sky her eyes bore a black hole, where there Jesus stood in a beautiful yellow globe, a purple Jesus, waving hello or goodbye with his fingerless hand.



* Finally, Bethany Powell, who currently has poetry forthcoming in Kaleidotrope, Apex, and Dreams &
Nightmares.


A Witch In Her Own Hometown
by Bethany Powell

“We are all well here – except, of course, Uncle Liam. 
He wants me to tell you how he's achey all over. “This ankle got turned over and near split from his calf, that's how bad he's got”, though he can still work, as long as we let him complain. He sits down and makes pained faces if we don't answer with proper sympathy for him. I have to write you something unhappy from town here, which is that Marge passed. I doubt you will take this to heart, unless you still pine for an apology. Her gravestone is as close as you'll get, I'm afraid – “Forgiven, as I forgave others”. The joke is on her,
really, though I can't let Ma see I wrote that.

But here's the point of this, dearest sister, and much harder  to write: come back home. Can you come? The Old Mayor's sick and bed-rid. Marge is dead, and with her I think mainly the gossip is forgotten, since she was the one who cared to make everyone remember. And we miss you. We can send a ticket for the train, or I guess you make money now to buy one, and we can pay you back. You should keep your savings. And maybe it would be hard for you. Maybe I could just come visit a bit, if you'll have me. We miss you desperately. No one else can tell you this, the way I will, but we want you here, and damn the town.

Now I really can't show this to Ma, and I'll just end it here
to get in the mail quick and to you quicker. Love...

PS The well's never drawn right since you left, either.”