Three drops from a cauldron: Samhain Special 2015 (Part Two)

three drops from a cauldron Samhain Special 2015 Part Two 15 October 2015

e Edited by Kate Garrett

www.threedropspoetry.co.uk

c Three Drops Press Sheffield, England

Editor’s Note Welcome to Part Two of our three drops from a cauldron Samhain Special e-issue!

The folkloric, mythical and spiritual connections to Samhain / All Hallows Eve are widespread, and worth looking into if you have the time. Some of the work included in this two-part seasonal special of three drops from a cauldron should be able to point you in the right direction.

Happy Halloween, Blessed Samhain – and have a wonderful autumn!

Best wishes, Kate Garrett

Sacred Festivities (Part 2)

1

Owls

2

Bony Hand and Haunted Pine

4

Lamia, Alone

5

Lost in the turns

7

Hag Haiku

8

Winterheart

9

The Scourge of the Forest

11

Eidolon

13

Visitors

14

Onryo

15

Night Walk in Longleat Forest

16

Eternal

17

Incubus

18

hex

19

Mrs Smith's Magic

20

The Song the Women of the Swamp Sing

21

The Witch Mother

22

An Edinburgh Halloween, Gilmore Place, 1961

23

The Mister

24

Yes, I have met them

26

The Dragon

27

Boscawen-Un

28

Stygian Witches

29

Another Witch

30

Turnip

32

White Stones

33

Writers

35

Previous Publication Credits

40

Other Three Drops Poetry publications

41

Sacred Festivities (Part 2) Flickering faces fill porches And the fairies come out to play Vampires unite with Lycan For this one eve only Mummies rise and walk amok Cackling witches and their cats Knock on doors carefree Restlessly holler trick or treat Buckets brimming and skipping feet It feels like mischief in the air Tacky red blood sticks Gleeful horror settles everywhere Spooks and ghouls feel alive This is our main event to shine Tonight we’re free To dance among our kings and queens For it’s the one, the only Halloween

Jax J. Victor

Owls Long ago, when they still toiled in the fields with strong arms and iron tools, still cleaved black furrows with stout horses, a witch came here to live. In those days she was a child, with a child’s ways, her smile like a sheaf of sunlight and her eyes as luminous as dawn.

Imagine, though, as womanhood sets over her like a harvest moon. Her smile is liquid. It laps drowsily, dreamily around the boys of the village and, one by one, they fall into the swoon of her eyes until their mothers declare they are bewitched. The girls of the village, neat and apple cheeked in their tight plaits and starched aprons, whisper amongst themselves of love spells and incantations and cast long glances when she passes them by. Mothers chatter and cluck, clutching feverish sons to their safe, feather-bed bosoms. Fathers rage and trumpet into jugs of sweet, brown ale then hang their wolf eyes upon her as she fills her pitcher at the village pump. She is witch. The power of her beauty trespasses and they can’t ignore or forgive.

Except one. The albino son of the preacher - salt-white, moonstone child. Touched

by God his father says, his hair soft as angel wings and his eyes like the red blood of martyred saints. Behind their hands, the villagers snigger at the vain and fanciful parson and his bone white child. The little ones shudder, call ‘vampire’ after him, are careful to avoid the cool, shadowed woods where he searches for fallen branches to carve owls.

The witch sees him, though; busy with his silver knife, darting in and out of the heart of a bough, flickering like a serpent’s tongue until layers unfurl and fall away, uncaging birds. Honey lozenges of light slip about him as he works until he glistens, burnished ivory and gold. Out from the indigo shade she steps and her smile pours over him, so fluid he could spread it like cream. She says his eyes remind her of the red rowans she gathers by the mill race. Hers, wild and green as the sea, draw him down and down till he’s lost in the depths.

Trysts are made and kept. Away from the wasps’ nest of the village, with its sharp stings and incessant drone, they meet. She brings him fragrant, black ale, threads speedwell into the thin mist of his hair. He cuts and shaves hawthorn, beech and rich chestnut, holly, sycamore and elm with his silver knife, liberating owls for her.

Beneath the charred presence of the lightning oak, a root bole rises. Twisted, flexed and coiled like a ram’s horn, it erupts from the hill, ravelled with maidenhair and stagshead, softened by plump constellations of moss. He feels the flutter of wings, hears the scurry of hearts, the screech and the scream of fettered souls. Hunkers down with his silver knife and the witch by his side, drowned in her smile and her aqueous eyes.

Days pass. The blade is delivering two owls from the oaken bole but the preacher has uncovered the fugitives of the silent woods. He listens and learns, divines love’s imprint, like heelmarks, in the earthen halls beneath the trees. Devoured by hate for the witch, with her honeysuckle smile and eyes which open like an ocean, he schemes and schemes until his heart is a plague in his breast, wilted and dry as a dead rose. He follows his boy, milk and blood and quicksilver, through woods pierced with light, through deep leaf litter, to the rafters of the lightning oak, radiating like the ribs of a Leviathan. He sees the witch, slender of neck with her circlet of speedwells, her sorceror’s ways, smiling. The silver blade slides between layers of wood and the coffin-eyed preacher waits. Waits for night to unwind its black sail and an ambush is set.

Watcher in the woods, with his ropes, his tarred brand and tinder box, witch-catcher, happy as the slow, vertiginous dark descends. He sees the glint of the silver knife, hears the whisper of voices and the cry of an owl. Lunges through the thick dusk, triumphal, to the cobbled rim of the lightning oak to find --- no-one. At his feet, a silver blade and a circlet of speedwells. From the lightning oak two white owls ascend, a rustle of feathered air, their eyes red as cinnabar and emerald as a deep lagoon.

Lesley Quayle

Bony Hand and Haunted Pine This eve, I take your bony hand in mine.

I’ll show you tricks or treats then painted dead, And wander shadowed lanes of haunted pine.

Midst seas of eager young, there is no sign That your tattered robes hide a sunken head.

This eve, I take your bony hand in mine.

Through fictitious fallen and sham divine, We’ll reap then gorge on sweets till overfed And wander shadowed lanes of haunted pine.

My young thoughts and your dusky mind entwine.

We laugh and fill some other world with dread.

This eve, I take your bony hand in mine.

When silver orbs hang high, and clocks strike nine, You’ll nod then point my weary head to bed And wander shadowed lanes of haunted pine.

But when trip and fall leads to broken spine, And shattered, homemade wings stain ruby red, This eve, I take your bony hand in mine And wander shadowed lanes of haunted pine.

Robyn Hemington

Lamia, Alone At last, by water’s edge, witnessed by writhing roots, this slick, prismatic pelt of mine is shed.

Scales drape; gossamer gauze shimmering silently with the serpentine brilliance of silk.

Sleek skin regards itself on the pond’s still surface – swollen with rainbow reflections, it broods.

My eyes revel in the opulence of eyelids; eyelash filaments filtering green light, whilst I luxuriate in the pleasure of limbs, of breasts; of hair, rich as autumn leaf-fall.

Fingers marvel at the satin-smooth feel of skin; nerve-endings celebrate texture and touch.

I am, I know, monstrous.

Reviled, abhorred, reduced; condemned to live a foul, rustling half-life, creeping across rough-strewn forest floors; diminished, imprisoned in a form that is not mine.

But here, among dark trees that twist in sympathy, I transform, and am beautiful again.

Sarah Doyle

Lost in the turns The eyes, the eyes never the snorting breath Over the moor the clap of wings says the sun falls and on the tree bones a tow-tow-tow-tow moan calls down mist as I watch you turn and start back At a table dinner in the silence of empty chatter a locked out moon dances in the silver strew of night while somewhere a vixen's yelp rides the wind With string found I walked away and left your horns John Alwyine-Mosely

Hag Haiku 1 Once I saw her: witch on a broomstick, silhouette against a blue moon / Now I am that hag, I witness blood-red skies: no innocent sunrise.

2 Black dress, black gloves, black bra even: evidence enough ‒ and a cat named ‘Ashes’!

Tried to understand the significance of ‘Bee Box’ ‒ not autobiography.

Now, witch, cat and broom chase hat and dragon, while we find conkers, acorns and name Silver Birch; as twilight gathers, I proffer garnered knowledge, try to understand significance of ‘Bee Box’ ‒ as autobiography.

3 Two red kite boil on high, descry CAPITAL LETTERS :1 etched trunks on blank field.

Murmuration swirls makes pointillist sturnus2 sketch on a stormus3 sky.

Helen May Williams

1

Mistral script.

Latin: starling.

3 Welsh: stormy.

2

Winterheart "...where she walks the crowd will part like the sea for Israel."

- Elizabeth Proctor, Act 2, The Crucible by Arthur Miller "... and still an everlasting funeral marches round your heart."

- John Proctor, Act 2, The Crucible by Arthur Miller Branches shift crookedly 'cross fields.

She shivers, scanning for eyes in the darkling forest.

Soft blonde heads safe in their beds, she goes to break thick panes of ice hardening water troughs, fingers thick, red-raw, calloused and split.

Frozen.

Cattle push forth, rocking uncertainly, hoof to cloven hoof.

They wait impatiently, surge forward, sucking gratefully, greedily, nostrils flaring; sweet breath plumes in frigid air.

Ice squeaks, cracks underfoot, frosted mud craters tug at her boots.

Soft light from an open door frames a small silhouette: long ears swivel, scanning, nose twitching.

She approaches.

Wet leather creaks, amplified in still, silent twilight.

Pause.

Lunge.

It's done: twist, crunch, twitch.

Still warm, she hangs and strips it, peeling back soft fur.

Like pulling off a stocking undressing her, revealing soft flesh beneath.

Tenderly she strokes smooth, pink curves; muscle gleams in candle's glow.

He's late. Again.

He returns. At last.

Work has kept him: age old story.

He stands, strives to read her back

strange map, dangerous territory.

She feeds; he tastes.

'It hurt my heart to strip her...' She waits.

'Tis well seasoned.'

Tis but a small salve of a lie; not the first.

She blushes, unfurling a little.

'You ought to bring some flowers in the house. It's winter in here yet.'

She withers. Ices over.

Turns her back and thinks of lilacs.

And Her. A.B. Cooper

The Scourge of the Forest (or Why Baba Yaga Became a Vegetarian) Baba Yaga was depressed—she was tired of eating children. She wanted to sink her teeth into a juicy peach. She dreamed of an open air market where a thousand aromas would excite her senses, not the whiff of filthy children, who arrived at the door beseeching her to help them get home.

Baba Yaga was called the Scourge of the Forest; even worse, her wretched hut was propped up on chicken legs. She tried to conjure spells but her powers had disappeared, so forest folks were no longer timid about taunting her.

Hey, crone, those twirling chicken legs are passé.

Baba Yaga longed to turn them all into ants and stomp them with her steel-toed boots.

The problem was what to do about the children?

When she was sated, Baba Yaga had a softer side.

Sometimes she gave the children warm goat’s milk and directions, making them repeat what she’d said, so they’d arrive home safely. But other times she’d fire up the stove, lure the children to the stream, where they’d splash in the cool water, emerging fragrant as roses and sweet in the stew.

One day when Baba Yaga was gathering kindling, she came upon an injured raccoon that had fallen into a trap and broken its leg. She took it home, thinking to eat it, but something stopped her.

She made a splint for the raccoon’s leg and a pillow of leaves for it to rest on. Days passed and the raccoon grew stronger. No children came by, so Baba Yaga picked bramble berries and boiled a soup of dandelion greens and wild mushrooms.

One summer night, she ventured from the forest and found her way to a tree where she tasted a luscious peach and stashed more in her knapsack. How sweet life had become!

To conclude: the raccoon was a woodland sprite, who, thankful for Baba Yaga’s care, gave her back her powers, but only if she used them for good.

Baba Yaga is now a vegetarian. She has conjured a beautiful garden where children can play.

Grateful parents bring gifts of cakes, eggs and cheese.

All’s well, except that Baba Yaga has two identical sisters, who live in the same forest.

They’ve been spotted flying in their iron mortars while they sweep the sky with their brooms.

Nancy Scott

Eidolon So here it is his final beginning, fleeing moon-rise on a white marbled evening, trees lightsome light-fast falling away and following.

Death slips its hooves between each resting shade, lip-writes his hours in scripted leaves, casts twigs of words that crack beneath his run. Fast, fast his feet that mark their miles in claggy earth and track a trail of beteled stones that sign him red and cut like thirst before the quench of things he’s not yet seen.

So here it is his birthed ending, leaving black-watched, bone feathered as a night call on a hard ribbed morning. This winding-sheet of path that leads him on through skinning scrub until he’s planed breath thin, as pure as lamp-shine. How cold the wandering.

Slow, slow his hands that moth each lichened branch as if he needs to stop a beating past, not lose his way.

We cross him here in a shift of sky or cloud, feel winter’s shroud all hallowed, quickening.

Mary Gilonne

Visitors my living room is prey to visitors unasked they give opinions straighten my pictures disturb my dust if a spade was a hand I would clout them the same sharp blade bury them six foot deep then return to my chair to read my book Gareth Writer-Davies

Onryo Her blood-spattered face in the mirror, You turn to face thin air.

Imagination, that’s all it is.

But you know she was there.

Clumps of hair clog the sink.

And teeth, and skin, and blood.

A practical joke, that’s all it is.

You’d believe it, if you could.

There she is in a photograph, An impossible time and place.

You need some sleep, that’s all it is.

If only that was the case.

Childlike laughter wakes you, The corpse in you bed is no dream.

Together forever, that’s what you said.

Your very last sound is a scream.

Simon Paul Wilson

Night Walk in Longleat Forest The moon smears owl mute over fence posts, spills faint ghosts into the lion park.

I see you ahead, padding in the pale shadow of a lioness. You walk arms outstretched. I wonder what you can see— snatches of light, movement.

Your retinas long since lost their light bounce of whole objects. The round moon just a sliver caught by chance.

Once I saw you spread the wings of a fruit bat, trace feather bones to the source of flight itself, first forests, grown and cut.

You teased out the ears of the bat, tuned in to the night’s high frequency.

Outside the wolves enclosure you listen as phantoms snuff and circle, draw down the moon through dilated nostrils, blow her back up high with lung-howls.

The owl hoots a dawn warning as you rejoin your shadow in bed.

Karen Jane Cannon

Eternal Under darkened skies Flickerings of moonlight Her translucent skin glistens Eyes like the sea Her fingers quiver Under brisk autumn winds Across buildings of timber Torches of fire Reflect shadows Of her carriage passing Inside witches stir their pot Autumn winds Holler a lonely call Carrying a tune Of some lonesome wolf Seeking his prey There's shadows among shadows Branches droop Tickling her carriages roof Like grasping fingers She reaches her cottage door Opening with a shudder Sounds of creaking bones She steps into shadows To whispered greetings From her grandfather’s ghost Whom offers goblets of dust?

Wolves scratching at her door Cry out for blood She turns to me and whispers Eternal Love.

Bob Roberts

Incubus The muffled scream of hope. Later I join a mother shuffling cards, sipping her gin, playing poker with ghosts that live to win.

The smell of soil reminds her of grandad, his hands as brown as clay. I have no kin: I am the voice that drifts within soft skin.

As night unzips her eyes, her lips as white as salt, I bind her soul until my sin empties a sigh for another end to begin.

Phil Wood

hex mellow moon mood that churns the milk and pales and waxes into yellow rage dammed she lies in the grass her head titled toward the red barn; she spits her curse to Hecate who sends her polecat running through the corn to loose fangs on the man who did her wrong hell is all that lingers is a shred of white lace - bloodied and torn, and a lynch rope hanging in the distance Julie West

Mrs Smith's Magic Everyday, the girl trots by the foundry and tries to blow a kiss across a smith's fire.

Today, I caught her reflection in a silver shield hanging on the wall and thought I'd seen a portrait of a younger me. I wonder if she already knows how to dip a horseshoe into the spring and hang it above her door so its smile draws a smith's eye. Perhaps she's found out how to turn herself into an old beggar woman so she can get close enough to warm her hands at his forge, collect his embers. I wonder if her mother has shown her how to use coals to light the way to her home. I know one day, for sure, she'll try to leave a feather on the anvil so she can swoop into his mind quiet as an owl, sweeping all thoughts of steel aside.

She may have already been to the place where the Earth opens its mouth to show a girl how to send her breath to the bellows like an echo of a love song forced through an accordion.

One thing she'll not know: tonight, I'll stop by her room, slip into her dream and burn her a picture of a melting sun and a river of fire, her own face on a blade. You can bet your best metal she'll be back tomorrow asking for nails so she can fashion a rusty cross. And when she asks me what to do to keep the devils away, I'll tell her straight: Go home, child. Set that charm at your own fireplace.

Joanne Key

The Song the Women of the Swamp Sing When the hoary frost come and the little kin Kane; She ask me to dance but she busy again.

I ask why she shine a little light on the tip toe, “The door,” she tell me, “Is an ill-mannered road.”

From creation come the answer To fierce-spoken prayer.

No longer mind the life, this life, nor the jailer.

Brine is like nectar through hummingbird straw, Itchy and tender, unsteady she draw.

I cry, why have I not been privy to cage?

I tat that plump pillow for this, no slow age.

From creation come the answer To fierce-spoken prayer.

Escape from the life, the jail, and the jailer.

FF Corbeau

The Witch Mother Old mother what is it you do stirring broth and making brew Why have you been snaring toads?

Why ask me to gather rue?

Yesterday you trimmed my hair, kept the trimmings in a jar.

Yesterday I fetched you mud from where all the hemlocks are.

Old mother, what is it you chant in a language I don’t speak?

Why smells our house of baking bread though the oven’s cold this week?

Now you give me this to eat, puddings shaped like little men.

You wait, smiling, eyes aglow, bid me eat them, but what then?

What strange magic have you made while I wept so bitterly?

If I eat these, mother dear, will my love come back to me?

Elizabeth Archer

An Edinburgh Halloween, Gilmore Place, 1961 The summer has ended.

Dad’s set our clocks back. Mum’s dusted their hands.

Today’s dark bids me home, bids me sleep.

I gobble my mince and tatties, waiting for six-thirty.

My lantern sits lop-sided in the hall, grins with malice. I hear the goblin’s curse in the turnip field. First step, frost wets the garden path.

My breath warms the nip, whitens the invisible.

Shadows shoogle on the familiar Terrace.

I mouth my party piece, lips putter each line.

A lamp lights the gable wall on my Victorian street.

Mum’s black gown flutters, scratches my legs.

She’s altered the seams this year, lowered the hem.

Her silver wedding heels glisten on the white, a kind of magic. The cardboard cone wobbles above, bright sugar-paper bedecked.

Mr Stevenson’s lines move on my lips…

Faster than fairies, faster than witches.

Aunt Jenny and Uncle Alex listened hard, pinioned on the couch. Practice makes perfect, they claim.

I hear their applause, their cheers. Mrs Marlowe, Mrs Allan, Mrs Thompson, Mrs Hardie open front doors with false surprise, swap poem for nuts and sweeties, a silver sixpence.

The best of all awaits in our church hall at the crossroads, wooden floors, broth and the chatter of busy kitchens.

Treacle scones on string dangle, giggles smothered in syrup and dough, bowls of swirling apples, swimming pools of treats. No hands, mind.

Peel your apple, throw unbroken peel over a shoulder.

Find your future there, princess.

Maggie Mackay

The Mister Quiet! Now! Or the Mister will come. You want the Mister to come do you?

The little boy had been shrieking since Asha and her mum got on the bus. She liked the word "shriek". She'd only just learned it yesterday and it fitted perfectly. This angry toddler who'd like you to believe he was crying was certainly shrieking. She could feel her mother's quiet annoyance and felt proud. Nobody could accuse her of being a shrieking brat on this bus. Asha was quiet.

The Mister is coming now! I can see him coming for you.

At this threat. The red, snotty, howling face seemed to buckle in on itself. The shrieking subsided in a noisy sniff. His mum sighed with embarrassed relief.

THAT's better.

Who was the Mister? Asha shivered. It took a lot to make a toddler cut a tantrum short. Last year, when Asha had been in nursery, she'd seen that often enough. Not even the dire threat of no snack could stop Freya Higgins howling and banging her fists if she didn't get her own way. This Mister was something to be scared of.

Certainly he was attracted by loud noise. Or maybe it was children he was after, and the noisy ones just caught his attention. Did he eat them? Was he the same thing as Stranger Danger? What did the Mister want with a shrieking baby like Freya or the now sleeping bundle of mucus, dribble and smeared chocolate in the pushchair in front of her?

Maybe he didn't like them any more than Asha did. Maybe he preferred cool stillness to hotheaded, noisy children.

Asha rubbed at the condensation on the window and looked out. Mist hung around the trees in the park. Obscured the view down to the mosque and the shops in wreathed of grey and white. Its strange prickling odour stung her nose. She shivered.

Mist.

The Mister.

So that's what he did, then, to the noisy, red faced, shrieking children who disturbed him.

He misted them.

No wonder autumn mornings always seemed so sad. No wonder the little boy had bitten his lip.

Asha was glad she was quiet. She would be invisible in her new grey pinafore and white blouse, a proper school girl now.

She would never let the Mister notice her.

She wouldn't be like Freya.

Freya wasn't on the bus today. Asha would have noticed. Freya was always noisy: laughing, crying, shrieking, singing. You always heard Freya before you saw her.

In the classroom Asha sat at her table. Robin and Adeel were in their seats, talking about robots as usual, but no Freya. Much as she found Freya annoying, Asha didn't much like being the only girl on her table. She didn't say anything. She was being as quiet as a mouse, as good as gold. The Mister wouldn't even think to come for her.

Robin had no such worries. Robin never asked one question when half a dozen would do.

Mrs Armitage! Is Freya poorly today? Why isn't she here? Is she in trouble again? Is she not allowed in our class? Is she expelded?

A giggle rippled round the class. Asha was silent, watching the cold, damp white that seemed to press on the window, desperate to get in.

No Robin, Freya has not been expelled, please don't be so silly. But I'm afraid she won't be coming back to our school anymore. She will be mist, won't she boys and girls?

Yes, Mrs Armitage.

Asha gasped so loudly it was almost a shriek. She clapped her hand across her mouth. So she was right.

The Mister had come.

Sarah Thomasin

Yes, I have met them When I came upon the angels I knew I was not prepared for the encounter.

Later I realised that my unreadiness was the reason I could see them at all.

They were sitting by a black tarn in a wooded valley. A small fire was burning near the lakeside. Pale centipedes swarmed, murmuring, over the moss.

One of the angels walked over to me.

The folds of its tunic breathed a faintly creaking luminescence. Its teeth a rodent’s smile. Tell me your secrets.

Jane Røken

The Dragon His chest is mighty and vast crowned with iron scales charcoaled with Hades' scars.

His talons are long-knives snickering in anticipation of bathing in my own blood.

His wings span for miles looming shadows of doom made from tough leather and bone.

His jaws hold nightmares and the shredded skin of friends, black teeth glow red and smile.

His mouth is endless and arid a desert in the countryside filled with pits of fire and Hell.

His throat clenches convulsively and my skin blisters as one today once more the Dragon has won.

Danielle Matthews

Boscawen-Un A solid paleness draws you across the circle of stones, not white at all, but a twilight in stone, a megalith of pearl, a weathered tooth, an island of rain. You want to touch it and expect to feel body-warm flesh.

Putting your cheek to it you intimate the unimaginable length of its life, still as young as it ever was: it hasn’t any other quick but a seam of speckled mica. Its script of quartz is spoken in glints and twinkles under the honeyed full moon.

Even with your fingertips you can’t imagine so many facets.

Rebecca Gethin

Stygian Witches You smell the reek of them first.

A trickle of treacly filth lacquering gloss on the path.

Sometimes there’s movement.

Sometimes someone takes the bait, follows their fate to its source.

They’ve all heard the slack-jawed rumours.

Stygian Witches peddling prophecy.

A slithering eye, viscid with mucus, slipping sockets like a parasite.

The lipless slurp of marrow mouths.

Close by, something grotesque gurns in the gloom.

Strops the air with its leathery tongue.

Shares its mind with its sisters. Anticipates.

Waits for its quarry to ask its question.

David J. Costello

Another Witch If you're lucky, your friends come and hang on your legs.

It's shorter then, no half-words choking out of you in mid-air.

More often, though, they're up there with you.

Friends, I mean. Neighbours, too.

Swinging in a wind too heavy to feel.

I talked too much, asked for what I could not have. They said, Could not have. I said, Please.

I said some other things too, I suppose.

It's only natural.

In the dark, no bed, bit of straw if you're lucky, they ask you to talk some more, and more. Had a kitten once, name of Jack, poor thing, eyes still blue and no mum.

And me, no kids, I thought why not, there's been no purring in the night for me now, not for years. Fed him milk, kept hanging on.

I was annoyed and proud both day he was strong enough to draw blood.

Grew to be a regular terror.

Got run over by a cart one day; cart-wheel came off, John broke his leg in the tumble.

Never saw him curse, change shape, or ride through the night.

John, that is. The cat either.

Beg pardon, your worship, but after three days without sleep I can't tell you from the devil either.

Now it's just a matter of revenge, or not.

There's Alice, she looked at me sideways the other day, and Jennet,

she thinks it's funny being old.

A couple of others, too, known 'em for years.

We're friends, sometimes. Sometimes, well, that's how it goes.

You choose who you want with you that last time, for the last meeting, for the thick, slow shading into black.

Jennifer A. McGowan

Turnip I was the first choice before my thunder was stolen.

None could hold a candle to my carved rictus, hollowed eyes.

What do these orange fatheads, swelling on sunlit ground, know about darkness, the tomb cool earth, with its teeming cities of fat maggots, jigsaws of bone?

Stephen Bone

White Stones On Samhain Eve when bleak winds bluster and snowdrifts deepen in dells, witches hurtle down lanes on tabby-cats (now black stallions in darkening dusk) or sweep inky skies on besoms, black robes flowing.

On Samhain Eve when ghosts of the departed flee barren fields and leafless woodlands and warm themselves by parlour hearths, cattle plod back from pastures in hills and glades to winter in stalls.

On Samhain Eve when we foretell the year in Callender, our family search Loch Eam for white stones, clean and polish them until they gleam like hope, notch on each a secret mark.

On Samhain Eve when we circle the stones around a bonfire of ferns, furze and peat blazing on a knoll above the cottage then collect them from ashes at dawn, we know our future fate.

Last Samhain morn when my son searched his stone wasn’t there; we knew he wouldn’t last the year. Lughnasadh he caught the fever and we buried him near a bend in the river mid-September.

Mary Franklin

I

Writers A twenty something writer living in East Anglia, England, Jax J. Victor has been an avid creator in many forms since a young age. The arts have been a constant outlet with writing being the beginning of it all. He lives surrounded by books and cats while musing over topics and themes to write about that appeal to his deep set love of all things fantasy and horror.

Lesley Quayle is a poet, author and folk/blues singer currently living in the wilds of rural Dorset. Her latest collection – Sessions – is published by Indigo Dreams Press.

Robyn Hemington is an English teacher from Ontario, Canada. She is currently working in China, but escapes the humdrum of an honest day's labor through her computer and creative community at Writing.com. Although her personality is bright and cheery, her shadowy alter ego can't stand rainbows, kittens, or unicorns. Two of her dark writing credits includes "Darling and Morrison", a short story in the Pankhearst anthology "Moremaids", and a poem in The Literary Hatchet.

Sarah Doyle is the Pre-Raphaelite Society’s Poet-in-Residence. She has been widely placed and published, with her first collection, "Dreaming Spheres: Poems of the Solar System" (co-written with Allen Ashley), being published by PS Publishing in autumn 2014. Sarah co-hosts Rhyme & Rhythm Jazz-Poetry Club at Enfield’s Dugdale Theatre. More at: www.sarahdoyle.co.uk John Alwyine-Mosely is a poet from Bristol, England who is new to poetry but not to faeries or myths. Recent work has also appeared in Stare's Nest, York Mix, Clear Poetry, Nutshells and Nuggets. Ink, Sweat and Tears, Street Cake, Screech Owl, Abbreviate Journal, The Ground, Aphelion, Uneven Floor,The Lake, Morphrog and Yellow Chair Review. https://publishedpoems.wordpress.com Helen May Williams is an Associate Fellow in the Department of English and Comparative Literary Studies, The University of Warwick. She is completing an edition of memoirs by her late mother, who worked at Bletchley Park and for E.C.I.T.O. Her poetry has been published in a number of small press publications since the late 1970s, including Hearing Voices, Horizon and Raw Edge, I Am Not a Silent Poet and the collection, Bluebeard’s Wives, Heaventree Press 2007.

A. B. Cooper has had a range of poetry published online and in postcard form with Paper Swans Press with whom she is co-editing an anthology entitled ‘Schooldays’.

In addition, she is currently setting up a poetry mentoring service for young poets.

She reviewed vampire film 'Byzantium' for the horror site 'The Slaughtered Bird' and is also working on her first novel - a ghost story for adults. She enjoys all things dark and delicious.

Nancy Scott is managing editor of U.S.1 Worksheets, the journal of the U.S.1 Poets’ Cooperative in New Jersey, which has met continuously since 1973. She has also authored eight collections of poetry on various subjects, including social justice, humor, ekphrasis, memoir, fairy tales, and her career as a social worker assisting homeless families and abused children. She frequently exhibits her collages and acrylics in juried shows and in online and print venues. www.nancyscott.net

Mary Gilonne is a translator living in France for many years but originally from Devon. She won the 2015 Wenlock Prize, has been short listed twice for the Bridport Prize and published in a number of online and paper magazines. " Poetry is the essential magical part of life".

Gareth Writer-Davies was Commended in the Prole Laureate Competition in 2015, shortlisted for the Bridport Prize and the Erbacce Prize in 2014, Highly Commended, Geoff Stevens Memorial Prize in 2013 and 2012. His pamphlet "Bodies" was published this year and is now available through Indigo Dreams.

Simon Paul Wilson is the author of Yuko Zen is Somewhere Else, End Credits, and has had short stories published in the Pankhearst anthologies, Heathers and Mermaids. He is now dipping his toe into the exciting waters of poetry. Originally from England, Simon travelled to Asia and found a second home in China. Heavily influenced by his time in China, Singapore, Cambodia and Thailand, Simon’s stories often feature kooky Asian girls and ghosts with very long hair. When not writing, Simon listens to post and prog rock at a very loud volume. He also likes to play air-guitar and other assorted instruments.

Karen Jane Cannon’s poems have appeared in a variety of print and online journals, including Acumen, Orbis, Obsessed with Pipework and Ink, Sweat & Tears, as well as anthologies such as Rewiring History and The Sea. She was shortlisted for The Flambard Poetry Prize 2014 and has an MA in Creative writing from Bath Spa University. Her novel Powder Monkey was published by Orion in 2003. She is currently researching her Creative PhD. A creative writer of poetry since teenage years and more recently film scripts, Bob Roberts has also made two video adaptations of his poems, with plans to expand to other poets. He is also actively involved in the open mic scene in the South Yorkshire area, currently running an event for poetry an acoustic music. Most of his poetry is reflective of his thoughts and feelings, though ‘Eternal’ is a work of fiction.

Phil Wood works in a statistics office, and enjoys working with numbers and words.

His recently published work can be found in online publicationsLondon Grip, The Recusant, The Stare’s Nest, Streetcake Magazine, and The Screech Owl. Julie West is a museum worker from Pontypool, South Wales. She started writing poetry as a child but only recently shared with the world. She is passionate intense and a synesthete. Loves DH Lawrence, Sylvia Plath and Seamus Heany - open to all other poets work especially that which pushes the envelope.

Joanne Key lives in Cheshire where she writes poetry and short fiction. She won 2nd prize in the 2014 National Poetry Competition and has previously been shortlisted for Poetry for Performance, The Bridport Prize, Mslexia Poetry Competition and The Plough Poetry Prize. Her poems have appeared both on line and in print. Completely in love with poetry, she writes every day and her work is often inspired by elements of fairytale and folklore.

FF Corbeau writes works dealing with issues of mental illness and women. She has never stopped writing; however, struggle and survival have kept sharing limited. She is releasing this mythology, finding literary output has fewer side-effects than Seroquel intake. She lives as close to the water as possible.

Elizabeth Archer writes flash fiction, short stories, and poetry. She lives in Texas.

Maggie Mackay has published in Still Me…(www.pewter-rose-press.com), winner of the Writers’ Circle Anthology Award 2014, with work in various publications including Open Mouse, Ink, Sweat and Tears, Bare Fiction, The Interpreter’s House, Obsessed with Pipework, Prole, I am not a Silent Poet, The Screech Owl and Three Drops from a Cauldron, and forthcoming in The Linnet’s Wings. She is a second year MA student at Manchester Metropolitan University, and a co-editor of Word Bohemia (www.wordbohemia.co.uk).

Sarah Thomasin is a performance poet living in Sheffield. As well as saying poems out loud at every opportunity, she has had poems published in Now Then magazine, and in two English Pen collections, the Pankhearst Slim Volume anthologies No Love Lost and Wherever You Roam, The Sheffield Anthology (poems from the city imagined) and Poems For the Queer Revolution. She was also commissioned to create a limerick quiz about gender which appears in Kate Bornstein's My New Gender Workbook.

Jane Røken lives in Denmark, on the interface between hedgerows and barley fields. She is fond of old tractors, garden sheds, scarecrows and other stuff that, in the due course of time, will ripen into something else. Her writings have been published in many different places, mostly online.

Danielle Matthews began sharing her work for the first time in October 2014. Since then she has been published by Heroine Zine, FlashFlood journal, Silver Birch Press, and her poem appears first in the Slim Volume: Wherever You Roam anthology. She lives with her books near Manchester, and they're all very happy together.

Rebecca Gethin lives on Dartmoor. Her collection A Handful of Water was published by Cinnamon Press (2013) who also published her two novels. She is a gardener, a children’s book seller and runs poetry workshops in Devon.

She has a website: www.rebeccagethin.wordpress.com, and her Facebook page is: https://www.facebook.com/rebeccagethindartmoor.

David J. Costello lives in Wallasey, Merseyside, England. He is a member of Chester Poets. David has been widely published on-line and in print including Prole, The Penny Dreadful, Shooter, Magma and Envoi. David is a previous winner of the Welsh International Poetry Competition and received a special commendation in the year’s competition. His debut pamphlet, “Human Engineering”, was published by Thynks Publishing in October 2013. A second pamphlet will appear in September 2016 from Red Squirrel Press.

Jennifer A. McGowan obtained her PhD from the University of Wales. Despite being certified as disabled at age 16, she has published poetry and prose in many magazines and anthologies on both sides of the Atlantic, including The Rialto and The Connecticut Review. Her chapbooks are available from Finishing Line Press, and her first collection, The Weight of Coming Home, was published in June 2015 by Indigo Dreams Publishing. Her website can be found at: www.jenniferamcgowan.com.

Stephen Bone has been published in various journals in the U.K. and U.S. First collection ' In The Cinema ' was published by Playdead Press 2014.

Mary Franklin has had poems published in Iota, The Open Mouse, Ink Sweat and Tears, London Grip, Message in a Bottle, The Stare’s Nest, three drops from a cauldron and various anthologies, most recently three drops from a cauldron: lughnasadh 2015 anthology. Her tanka have appeared in poetry journals in Australia, Canada, UK and USA. She lives in Vancouver, British Columbia.

I

Previous Publication Credits ‘Lamia, Alone’ by Sarah Doyle was first published in the British Fantasy Society’s Journal, 2011.

‘The Scourge of the Forest’ by Nancy Scott was originally published in Cyclamens and Swords, and the author’s own collection The Owl Prince (Aldrich Press, 2015).

‘Another Witch’ by Jennifer A. McGowan was first published in her collection Life in Captivity (Finishing Line Press, 2011)

Other Three Drops Poetry publications Available in print Three drops from a cauldron lughnasadh 2015 anthology Forthcoming in print Three drops from a cauldron imbolc 2016 anthology Available e-issues Samhain Special 2015 Part One Forthcoming e-issues Midwinter Special 2015 (December) Beltane Special 2016 (April) * We are also open for pamphlet and chapbook submissions until 15 January 2016.

Visit www.threedropspoetry.co.uk/submissions/pamphlet-chapbook-submissions for details.