Super-Sized Series

 Magical, Mystical and Supernatural

 

 

The Feather by Laurie Byro

My mother was an athlete, almost 6 feet tall.
At the age of fifty, she played in volleyball leagues
on winning teams with twenty-somethings.
 
I am 5 foot 2 and hate sports. Mom called me a wimp.  
I was diagnosed with MS in my mid-forties. Yet,
I am a big walker and may have kept myself mobile
by walking two miles every morning
and swimming in the lake in the summertime. 
 
After this long winter, I am so out of shape
I cannot pull myself up the last rung of the ladder
to hoist myself on the floating dock. 
The lifeguard says "it's the ladder, it's bent,
try the swim raft further out." 

That dock is another 50 feet away but I stubbornly
aim for it, the lifeguard will watch out for me, I figure.
As I get closer, I see what I think is a white bird perched
on the top rung.  But as I get near, I know what it is,
and my heart quickens remembering my mother.

A feather waves like a flag. It was caught
in a spider web.  Beckoning me as I got closer.
I easily hoist myself onto the raft, give the guard
two thumbs up. 

On her deathbed, at the age of seventy,
a few years older than I am now,
my mother said: “Whenever you see a feather
after I’m gone, it will be a message from me.”
 
I stretch out on the raft panting, "message received Mom."
“You did it” the feather whispers in the water
 and I reach for it to catch it before like my mother, it leaves. 


The Plucky Heroine by Sarah Carlton
- after “The Bear,” from
The Grey Fairy Book

The witch who acted as nursemaid
knew some girls were born to mischief 
and a craving for costumes

so she helped her charge sneak
away after dark, cloaked in bear. 
Muscular and sharp-toothed,

this girl-bear felt free to prowl the forest 
and let the story discover her. Like most 
teens, she was both beast and diva.

When the royal hunting party stumbled
on her lair, she cried, Call off your dogs!
knowing a prince tired of court 

manners would deem a talking bear 
cool enough to take home to meet 
his mother. And indeed, she made 

a good impression on the queen
—all fuzz and teddy, hunkering down 
in the palace kitchen with bowls

of blueberries and platters of salmon—
but at night she pulled from her sack 
a moonbeam gown perfect 

for cosplay and dashed off to dance 
at the ball, light as flight, skirts like clouds 
sailing behind her, not a claw in sight.


In the High Desert, She Is No Longer an Aries by Marianne Szlyk

That sign strides the wide sidewalks of Chicago
with wider red shoulders and matching leather pumps.
Pert and brunette, its curls bounce
but stick like plastic when Tom Cruise
(or his look-alikes) touch them.

Aries never listens to lyrics and wears a bow tie.

But she is no longer an Aries.
She is waiting
for the Age of Aquarius to resume.

In coach, she leans back
to watch the high desert become
green, sprouting trees
cloaked in bright moss,
frilled with ferns,
bubbling with mushrooms,
rivers clean and cold to the touch,
tiny houses the color of dirt, grass, and rocks,
color to blend in, not stand out,
nothing red, nothing plastic,

everything
she is waiting for.

Previously published in What's Your Sign? a poetry anthology inspired by astrology (Western, Chinese, Indian) 


Night Sounds by Sarah Russell

She tiptoes to the garden
on cricket nights to visit beings
busy in the grass, sycamore and willow,
hidden except for a swoosh, or chortle,
or pounce and small scream.

This night, she settles herself
on a stone in shadows, watches
moonlight tremble through leaves,
breathes moss, larkspur and clover.
Her fingers play with the hem
of her nightie, and she shivers.

Soon, she hears the wind chime cadence
of fairies dancing. The moon casts
a wildflower path to a clearing,
but the sounds drift ahead, out of reach.
She fears she’ll be lost and returns
to her stone in the garden.

Inside her house are loud voices
and sobs and the thud of something
falling. But she hears only the tinkling fairies. 
She knows someday they’ll find her 
and bring her to another garden
where another girl, sitting on a stone,
will hold her hand.


Auntie Aggie by Lynn White

It was a beautiful seventeenth century farmhouse 
in a picture postcard English village,
the family home of Liz
who would drop me off there 
on our way back home from college.
I would pick up the bus for the last fifteen miles.

That night was my first overnight stay.
Liz lived with her parents and granny
and inside it was as olde worlde as out
with creaky floor boards and beamed ceilings.

It was Saturday and her parents were out
so we played our music loud.
Granny was said to be a little deaf
and she didn’t complain about the music.
I could hear her as she crossed the room above
to open a drawer or cupboard and then return
to her favourite chair in the corner
but there was no angry banging on the floor,
just frequent sorties back and forth,
her footsteps sprightly and unremarkable.
I didn’t mention her to Liz,
it felt rude, somehow.

At about eleven we heard a car draw up
and turned our music down.
Liz’s parents came in
followed by Granny.

Confused, I asked about the footsteps above
and they all laughed.
“That’s Auntie Aggie,” said Liz,
“She lived here when the house was first built.
She always walks when someone new visits.
She likes to introduce herself.
She’ll stop now you’ve acknowledged her.”

And she did!

First published in Dark Winter


The Bowls by Elaine Sorrentino

They nested
blue inside red
inside green
inside yellow,

the largest Pyrex
ideal for summertime fruit salad
and Thanksgiving stuffing prep,
stored on the top shelf

where my mother
tall in heart, short in stature
was incapable of reaching,
so, she shook her fist in the air,

Herb, why did you leave me?
My father, two months buried,
answered the only way he could−
placing the yellow bowl on the counter.

Momentarily disarmed  
she chose not to question the miracle
but continue slicing apples, peaches, grapes
for other-worldly ambrosia.

Good Friday by Joe Cottonwood

Old man Bud hires me
to install an electric outlet
in his spiffy townhouse
because “they forgot this wall.”

Bud watches from a Barcalounger
with a blanket on his lap
as I cut holes and run wires 
and he tells me he died 
three days ago. 

His heart stopped during surgery.
I ask “So do you remember?”
“You mean the tunnel?”  
“Anything.”

“Naa. I woke up with 
a brain like a bowling ball. 
Like I dreamed something. 
Scored a spare.” He laughs. 
“Maybe next time a strike.
Wanna beer?” 


Drawing by Rachael Ikins

Kiss-Me-Kate and the Green Hooded Sod Fairy by Rachael Ikins

Kiss-me-Kate and the blackberries, a green-hooded sod fairy. You offer night’s garden, a pair of open hands. 
Green Man casts a long line until he hooks. Roots grip. Old trunk withers. 
Blackberries bound across the brook, bounce off steppingstones set too far apart. Smear my mouth.
Word-flow trickles, evaporates. Kate kisses the Green Man. His lips bleed.
I make lines, still juice, purple fingers, lines not shaped like letters. 
Paint, 
pastel, 
ink, 
burdock-leaf baskets  sewn with twigs spilling berries, 
 
it is all poetry.


The Psychic in the Seminar by Sharon Waller Knutson

asks me to read the mind of the sceptic:
a pale petite pony-tailed princess 
sitting in the front row staring
off into space like she wants
to be anywhere but here.

A room full of females
stare at me as I describe
what I see in the movie of my mind:
a log cabin nestled in the hillside
populated with Ponderosa Pine
and a red-breasted robin
perched on the porch.

I expect the skeptic to snicker
and mock me because I was sure
her mind was a blank screen.
But instead she whirls around
her blue eyes big as balloons. 
“I was thinking about my grandmother’s
cabin in the mountains,” she says.

The only person in the room
including me who wasn’t surprised
by my mind reading was the psychic
conducting the seminar.

“I knew you had psychic powers
the minute you walked in the room.
You could do what I do,” says the psychic
who charges big bucks in her San Diego
Suite predicting the future for clients.
.
I never hung out a shingle because
my psychic powers came out of the blue
like lightning and thunder 
and I was wrong more than right.

Like when I had a premonition 
a female friend in her fifties
would drop dead from a heart attack
which I shared with my healthy
husband who drove 100 miles
and shopped at six stores
the day before I found him
dead of a heart attack.

I would rather have the powers
of a medium so I could communicate
with him and family and friends
who are already on the other side.

Something Is There by Arlene Gay Levine

not really you and yet…
Something exists underneath
all those bits and pieces creating
whom you imagine you are,
more enigmatic than the mortal
looking back at your face
in the mirror every day.
It is the one gazing at you
from the inside, peaceful,
old as forever and younger
even than tomorrow.
 
When the you that you know,
perhaps falling short of how
you wish you could have been,
is no longer here, something,
that other boundless, soundless
light made of love who is and is not you -
will still be waiting,
an open hand inviting you to
the magnificence of its Mystery
once again.

Previously published in Quest: The Journal of the Theosophical Society of America 


A Dream/A Nightmare by Marilyn Zelke Windau

With wide open eyes,
I sat bolt upright in my bed.
A greyish-white figure
with a human-like body
sat there at the edge.
 
Its strange ghostly face stared at me.
From out of its mouth poured
round metal washers—
hundreds of them.
They clunked to the carpeted floor
silently.
 
It didn’t speak, just eyed me.
It never blinked.
 
I tried to scream, to make noise
but no sound exited my mouth.
 
I ran to my parents’ room to escape.
In horror, I told my middle school friends
my dream/my nightmare later that morning.

From my book: "Living with the Dead" Water's Edge Press publisher 2026


Like the Magic of Cygnets by Abha Das Sarma

I hoped for a transformation.
And to my amazement,
my son was effortless
in Indian percussion—
‘tabla’ flowing from his hands
with the very rhythm 
I practiced 
when I held him in my womb. 

Inspired by my friend
who produced a swimmer
being one. 

Yes, the science may say
It’s but natural 
but for me every beat
is a secret we shared in the dark,
a quiet, lifelong promise.
Magic and wonder that keeps us so
In love.

 
Year of the Black Water Dragon by Rose Mary Boehm

Lichened pillars support
a pier that leads into the turning.
I walk towards a small lake where
the chanterelles open their crooked
fans. Examine the underbelly of the
snail that carries Fibonacci’s
spiral. Canal dreams.
The cranes' mating dance.

Brown and burgundy leaves rush
towards the rotting hut as on a mission.
The mistral sends black flakes
from the burning pines,
and the red of the sky fills with
dark fingers pointing accusingly
upward. Looking inward

Skeletal beasts with crumpling horns
are offering planetary solutions.
Night-sky cravats in all fire colors
weave divisions that recover
on the leaf boat sitting on glittering
pinpoints of light on tiny waves.

Like transparent boulders, raindrops
roll towards the green tunnel
of a giant rhubarb leaf. Don’t
walk on water lilies. Make
a place to trust with peacock
feathers that lead you to sanctuary.

Snakes in the bonsai between
old railway lines. Is a blob of butter in
flour the same as a stone in sand?
Lightning stallions make sharp shadows.
Snow geese sit in baobab trees.

Do not judge your mind.
The world is a loud place.

From my book The Rain Girl


GHOSTS by Lorraine Caputo
 
I am chasing
the ghosts
of my past.
I’m running away
from them.
 
I want to confront you,
grab your wasted,
bloated arms,
force you
to look into my eyes.
I want to confront
your myth,
your reality.
The madness
I fear grows within.
I run from you
screaming
denying your existence,
whether in some reality
or only in my mind.
I want to flee
from you
& yet
I find my Self
confronted,
surrounded by you.
 
I’m chasing the ghosts
of my past.
I’m fleeing
from them ….
 
Previously published in Lothlorien Poetry Journal 


Not Meant for Humans by Luanne Castle
after Claude Monet's The Artist's Garden at Giverny

The walkway seems to have no beginning, and so I tiptoe through the purple and blue blossoms to reach the rough path, feeling naughty and bold but safe for its proximity to a well-painted building. I circle the garden of Iris, the rainbow herself. Round I go three times and then spy a spot of bone under the willow. The sun ray has moved, so now I can see what I have missed. Or did it just appear? I step closer, into the flowers, careful not to crush the blossoms themselves, aware I might be harming stems.  My curiosity draws me in. As I bend toward the ground, I part the plants and see a very small skeleton, as of an excruciatingly tiny human. Her shredded wings are faded with age, but once must have been the blue of Iris with yellow dots like bright and miniature suns. Perhaps she fell from the branch above when she was asleep. I understand now why the path repeats itself, an endless spinning trail, meant as it is for those with wings to fly above the garden and to rest in the shade of the well-nourished trees. Still, being human, I invite you to share in my experience.
Watch for tiny wings
hidden by goddess Iris
and her endless path.


To read more Storyteller Halloween poems

https://stortellerpoetryreview.blogspot.com/2024/10/

https://stortellerpoetryreview.blogspot.com/2025/10/super-sized-series_0576861597.html