#jennifer crow

[gwydionmisha]

Black Ships Burning by Jennifer Crow

No way home--you know this when flames stain the wine-dark sea. You watch the past blaze against Ilium's sands; the glow illuminates the stunned faces of your comrades. This is how kings roll the dice: not with bones, but lives of men. Sea spray or tears, salt touches your mouth, and the gulls laugh overhead like the distant gods. Tomorrow blood will run down your blade and the hot, rank scent of death will cling to you in the night while the captains count their spoils. You knew glory once, when Aeolus's winds snarled your hair and waves creaked beneath the bow of your ship. Athena's eye watched you-- but no more. Her painted wards warp and bubble in the heat, and you stand godless on the beach watching fires paint the clouded night.

[this-quiet-spawning-of-roots]

Fire Begets Water - Jennifer Crow

Fire begets water as passion begets tears: I drown in our past in the slow tide of dreams ebbing out with the turning of the moon. I drown in you, in the memory of nights swimming through wine-dark bliss to a shore laced with broken shells and jagged rocks. Cast adrift, the salt of my blood mingling with the sea's, I let the current batter me to shards against the shore. And you, mermaid-pale and careless, look on, a comb in your hand.

[this-quiet-spawning-of-roots]

Orpheus in the Overworld - Jennifer Crow

I played, for worlds beyond the earth I dreamed, played them through the spheres, played a thousand rivers of forgotten song. They took her to lure me, promised freedom from their metal dreams, the shadow of lives between worlds, on the dark ocean of the night. They took her, drew her form in the air, a ghost of light that winked out when I touched her cheek. I played for the memory of an embrace, for summers on the high hills, for winters beside a fire. I played for the sorrows in her ghost face, all the rivers of song in me, a sea of music, rising up to drown us all. But no Lethe--I recall counting stars no mortal eye had seen, ringed worlds, drifts of ice and wings of fire. But when they let me dream, I dreamed of her, and cried out, and was not comforted, and my songs wept, too, until they let us go. Tell no one, they said, or you will lose her. They gave me an empty amphora, a woman drained of all that made her mine. And when I whispered the secret, when I tried to fill the secret hollows in her mind, she shattered. Nothing remained to us, to me, but a slow dying under a canvas of ordinary stars.

[gwydionmisha]

[amazingstories]

Poetry - The First Bite of the Apple, Jennifer Crow

Poetry – The First Bite of the Apple, Jennifer Crow

First Bite of the Apple, Jennifer Crow Elektrik Milk Bath Press, 2013 I have been sitting on this review for entirely too long. It is really such a wonderful collection, that I felt I needed to write a review worthy of it. So far, I have never felt like I was capable of that. I still don’t, but at least now I feel I have to try. Jennifer Crow decided she wanted to be a writer at the age of eight,…

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[ironedorchid]

You wake from dreams of inlaid mother-of-pearl with your hair in seaweed tangles and your legs wound in damp sheets. A fishy smell percolates through the apartment, and the shower tastes like brine. When you sing to yourself the neighborhood cats purr on the sill and the delivery man whistles from the street. He knocks, but forgets why because the song dies on your lips. Beneath the bus's hum and screech you hear the susurrus of waves and distant cries of gulls. Your clothes constrict -- at work, during your lunch break you loosen your blouse past the point of decency and splash chlorinated water on flushed cheeks. Behind your reflection a beach awaits you -- volcanic sands polished by the tide, and your sisters weeping for joy in the surf.

Mermaid Syndrome, by Jennifer Crow, Goblin Fruit, summer 2007