Fantasy and Reality read a book
Turn the page. What waits there?
In the middle of the forest is...
A wolf? A gingerbread house? Robin Hood?
A rude mechanical, braying in the face
of the fairy queen? The road less travelled?
A cherry, hung with snow? A leprechaun?
Teddy Bears’ picnic? Or, in a shallow grave,
a body, badly decomposed?
Turn the page.
...a child. In her hands she holds...
– a what? A whetted knife? A mutilated Barbie?
Her mother’s heart? A snake? A laptop?
A suitcase full of bloodstained cash? An axe?
A poisoned apple? Book of spells?
A little Indian boy? A bow and arrow? Lunch?
...a bird.
What kind of bird? Perhaps
a blue bird, raven, albatross, swan?
Puddleduck? Skylark, Crow or Kes?
Jonathan Livingston Seagull? Owl? Fowl?
Croquet flamingo? Cratchit goose?
Chicken Little or a hawk in the rain?
It was a common or garden sparrow.
Finish the book.
The forest has gone. The child has grown.
The bird has flown.
Only what if? remains, stubbornly refusing to die.
Page(s) 18
magazine list
- Features
- zines
- 10th Muse
- 14
- Acumen
- Agenda
- Ambit
- Angel Exhaust
- ARTEMISpoetry
- Atlas
- Blithe Spirit
- Borderlines
- Brando's hat
- Brittle Star
- Candelabrum
- Cannon's Mouth, The
- Chroma
- Coffee House, The
- Dream Catcher
- Equinox
- Erbacce
- Fabric
- Fire
- Floating Bear, The
- French Literary Review, The
- Frogmore Papers, The
- Global Tapestry
- Grosseteste Review
- Homeless Diamonds
- Interpreter's House, The
- Iota
- Journal, The
- Lamport Court
- London Magazine, The
- Magma
- Matchbox
- Matter
- Modern Poetry in Translation
- Monkey Kettle
- Moodswing
- Neon Highway
- New Welsh Review
- North, The
- Oasis
- Obsessed with pipework
- Orbis
- Oxford Poetry
- Painted, spoken
- Paper, The
- Pen Pusher Magazine
- Poetry Cornwall
- Poetry London
- Poetry London (1951)
- Poetry Nation
- Poetry Review, The
- Poetry Salzburg Review
- Poetry Scotland
- Poetry Wales
- Private Tutor
- Purple Patch
- Quarto
- Rain Dog
- Reach Poetry
- Review, The
- Rialto, The
- Second Aeon
- Seventh Quarry, The
- Shearsman
- Smiths Knoll
- Smoke
- South
- Staple
- Strange Faeces
- Tabla Book of New Verse, The
- Thumbscrew
- Tolling Elves
- Ugly Tree, The
- Weyfarers
- Wolf, The
- Yellow Crane, The