Published by Karl Rademacher on . This item is listed in Introductions, Issue 25, Issue 25 Poetry, Uncategorized

Poetry Introduction for Issue 25

As usual, I am proud of our contributing poets for Silver Blade Issue 25.

Deborah P. Kolodji is our Featured Poet and her introduction and interview are found here. To show a small sampling of her talent, Deborah Kolodji (Pasadena, CA) shares her favorite form, haiku: two singular pieces “spent lilacs” (Gromagon Press) and “morning launch” (Scifaikuest) subtly science fiction, followed by a fanciful series of linked fantasy and Sci Fi haiku [“Bashō after Cinderella”*(Rattle), part of which won the 2013 Dwarf Stars Award; “Bashō on the Back Road to Camelot” (Dragons, Knights, and Angels); and “Seasons of a Time Traveler” (Mythic Delirium)]. Her set closes with a beautiful science fiction poem “Equations of a Sonata” that’s as much of a love poem as it is a eulogy.

This segues nicely into a poem “Weathering” by Sandi Leibowitz (Astoria, NY), also about loss, and without sentimentality. The delightful storytelling prose poem “Deaamoo’s Passage” by Deborah Guzzi (Monroe, CT), organically continues what the preceding poems started.

The somewhat darker work with the chant-like structure in the poem “House of the Blind” by Marchell Dyon (Chicago, IL) has nuances of both a rant and a prayer. Like Guzzi’s poem, Dyon’s also has a spiritual subtext. The prolific Australian poet, John Grey (Johnston, RI), presents a very dark poem “The Tattooed Lady”.

There’s a different kind of darkness in the last two poems, both bring mystery and fantasy. An Academy of American Poets Award winner, Laura Madeline Wiseman (Lincoln, NE), brings us an unusual fantasy poem “Crossing the Fairy Threshold”, which is part of a growing collection of fairy neverland poems, and John Reinhart closes us with the pensive and poignant piece “lost in the forest”, which is part of a longer previously published piece [“Dark Light” (Interfictions)].

Please enjoy their work.

John C. Mannone

Poetry Editor

Silver Blade

Published by Associate Editor on . This item is listed in Uncategorized

Crossing the Fairy Threshold

She sprinkled my head with dust. She offered me a table with glass bottles and glass plates. Drink me, they said, Eat me. One said, Swallow, but close your eyes. On her palm she held a green pill and a red pill and said, Your choice. On the floor were a pair of red slippers. She said, Click your heels three times, or maybe she said nine or thirteen. She said she wanted my tongue, my mother, my hands, my first born for spun gold, for a chance to kiss a prince, marry a king, wake the sleep of briar. Figuring all this was fairy magic, fairy tale, fairy mirth, fairy dust, I swallowed, I ate, I clicked, I bowed my head for the dusting. I found the door to a room in my kitchen I didn’t know existed. I knocked three times, chanted the charm, said the password. I did everything. I did all. I let the thing be done.

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Laura Madeline Wiseman is the author of Some Fatal Effects of Curiosity and Disobedience (Lavender Ink, 2014), Queen of the Platform (Anaphora Literary Press, 2013), Sprung (San Francisco Bay Press, 2012), and the collaborative book Intimates and Fools (Les Femmes Folles Books, 2014) with artist Sally Deskins, as well as two letterpress books, and eight chapbooks, including Spindrift (Dancing Girl Press, 2014). She is the editor of Women Write Resistance: Poets Resist Gender Violence (Hyacinth Girl Press, 2013). Wiseman has a doctorate from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. She has received an Academy of American Poets Award, the Wurlitzer Foundation Fellowship, and her work has appeared in Prairie Schooner, Mid-American Review, Margie, and Feminist Studies. www.lauramadelinewiseman.com