ISSUE 4 - FAIRY TALES

CONTENTS

Once upon a time, the Editor of Lavender Review fell under the spell of Mady Art. The Editor looked and looked at many paintings by Mady, until she was too smitten to speak and could only point at Mady Art and sigh. So the Editor selected six works by Mady Art, all completed since 2000, to feature in this issue of Lavender Review.

“Mady (Marie Bourdages, b. 1966) is a Montreal-based artist who creates expressionist-inspired works in chalk, pastels, charcoal, and oil paint. Her work expresses highly personal emotions and sensibilities, and often dwells on life, death, lesbian and autoerotic sexuality, spirituality, and memory and its distortions. Mady’s work was first shown in 1985 at the Université du Québec Montréal and has since been exhibited in dozens of shows and galleries in Montreal, New York, and Germany.” (glbtq Encyclopedia)

Mady is a great artist, in this Editor’s opinion, in Mady’s opinion (watch her dear video, The Greatest Painter of the Century at The Cheapest price !!!! MOUHAHA !!!!), and in the opinion of another Editor, “For this exceptional result, we find only on the palettes of significant artists, paint, conscience and care mixed in equal proportion.” (Robert J. Lewis, Editor of Arts & Opinion)

Being a great artist is no fairy tale, as Mady hilariously suggests in this video. Mady’s series of seascapes “expresses the artist’s yearning for the comforting world she remembers from her childhood in the seaside village of Bonaventure in Quebec’s Gaspesia region.” (glbtq Encyclopedia) Mady’s video, Berceuse pour Alzheimer, an extremely poignant portrait of her ailing mother, gives us Mady’s true voice in a beautiful song.

Also included in this issue are fantastical visions by contemporary artists Nancy Macko, Jessica Burke, Ali Liebegott, Laurie Lipton, Stefanie Schneider, Jane Lewis, Eleanor Leonne Bennett, Catherine Eyde, Shareen Knight, Robert Giard, Katie Badenhorst, Shantell Martin, and Carla Steiger, plus extraordinary historical artwork by John Bauer and Gustave Doré. Lady Clementina Hawarden's photograph, which graced the cover of an edition of Lillian Faderman’s Surpassing the Love of Men: Romantic Friendship and Love Between Women from the Renaissance to the Present, is the fairy tale of a lesbian couple circa 1864.

The poems I selected for this issue are portraits of souls in distress, queer folk and fairies in terrible trouble, questing and conjuring means of escape. To tempt you into reading more, here are lines from the poems:

you’re a burnt child already / in a soggy quagmire (Rhéa Ess)

Her hand uncurls, a spindly woodland lily (Rose Kelleher)

Honeycombs and lemons she gave—rich gifts (Lauren Joslin)

my curve prow craves to / part the crystal dream (Larry Blazek)

the tornado who throws the pine trees down (Mary Cresswell)

Let sea-wrack settle and wreckage rest (Jan Steckel)

whose language no one understood (Siham Karami)

She turned stone cold around me (Carol Brockfield)

shadows of misunderstanding (Ed Bennett)

The stitching never ends (Risa Denenberg)

Jane was the loveliest girl at Girton (Mitchell Geller)

every path he strolls is strewn with flowers (Timothy Murphy)

a dwelling she defended against any—mostly men (Barbara Egel)

Her lips grew rough, bark-covered as they prayed (Gail White)

I thought if we behaved, we would escape (Eleanor Lerman)

When the Editor took a bite from a story by Rachel Steiger-Meister, she fell into a dream possibility. Why not ask the writer of this dazzling story to guest edit a special fiction section for Issue 4? Rachel Steiger-Meister turned out to be a PhD student in Creative Writing-Fiction at the University of Cincinnati whose work frequently incorporates fairy tales and fairy tale motifs. Hello, Rachel!

Hello! First, I’d like to acknowledge the wonderful fairy tale leap Mary took in inviting the girl who sent in a fiction submission in response to a call for poetry and art to edit her very own fiction section. How lucky I am to have her as my e-zine fairy godmother! In addition to granting my wish for publication, I was given the opportunity to assemble a magical array of tales. It was the perfect editorial gig for a girl who’s been gaga for fairy tales ever since she can remember—second wish granted! As you probably know, fairy tale magic often comes in 3s. So what’s my third wish? That you, reader, will enjoy the issue at least half as much as I’ve enjoyed playing a part in putting it together.

While working on the issue, the word that kept coming to my mind was transgression. Lesbians, dykes, queers of all types resist and transgress the heteronormative pressures and expectations of society in the course of our daily existence, in a world still plagued by hatred and misunderstanding. Fairy tales, too, are filled with acts of transgression. Earnest young women and men set off on adventures, leaving their homes behind them, transgressing the “social station” they were born into in pursuit of something different. People wander into forbidden territories: deep dark forests, ghostly castles, fairy other worlds. Older women devour children; people are transformed into animals and back again; the rules of the regular world don’t apply. Queerness abounds, making fairy tales a fitting medium for LGBTQ writers.

The fiction in this Fairy Tales issue reclaims happily ever after, questions happily ever after, and dives deeply into the strangeness and beauty fairy tales offer. In Sarah Schulman’s story “Why Not” a quest for a fairy tale happy ending goes awry in contemporary L.A.; in Lucy Corin’s “A Woman with a Gardener” the “real world” becomes enchanted; and in Leopoldine Core and Eileen Myles’s “17 Fairy Tales” the possibilities for magical tale telling seem infinite (or at least number 17!). Carolyn Gage (“Becca and the Woman Prince”) creates fairy tale worlds where romantic love between women can exist. Susan Stinson shares the power of dream and wonder with us in Martha Moody, and Catherynne M. Valente paints a haunting picture of desire and death in “Bones Like Black Sugar.”

We hope you enjoy the magic riches in this issue.

Mary Meriam, Editor
Rachel Steiger-Meister, Guest Editor
December, 2011

ISSUE 4 - FAIRY TALES - CONTENTS

POETRY

ART

RHEA ESS Mistress of the Wife ROSE KELLEHER Fingerprinting Mrs. Belyakova LAUREN JOSLIN Sister, Dear Sister LARRY BLAZEK A Semi-Material Sailor MARY CRESSWELL Pied Piper Fish Story JAN STECKEL Last Spar Shanty The Unfortunate Rake SIHAM KARAMI Bird of Paradise CAROL BROCKFIELD I Had to Tell Her ED BENNETT My Sister is Free RISA DENENBERG Yellow Star MITCHELL GELLER Rapunzel Explains Miss Remington's Reverie TIMOTHY MURPHY Heaven on Earth BARBARA EGEL Lilly Britten GAIL WHITE Woman Into Tree ELEANOR LERMAN The Witch Deliberates A Book of Spells VARIOUS POETS Let me hold your heart like a flower

MADY MARIE BOURDAGES Créature Céleste MADY MARIE BOURDAGES La Nature MADY MARIE BOURDAGES Les petits démons de l'Amour MADY MARIE BOURDAGES Sans titre MADY MARIE BOURDAGES Baleine Rêveuse MADY MARIE BOURDAGES La mer 4:05 AM, Bonaventure-Est NANCY MACKO Thera 5 (2003) JESSICA BURKE Dissolution of a Fairy Tale (2009) ALI LIEBEGOTT Do You Have Any Human Friends? (2009) STEFANIE SCHNEIDER The Muse (2009) LADY CLEMENTINA HAWARDEN Two Women on a Balcony (c. 1864) JANE LEWIS Veil Study (2000) CATHERINE EYDE Stella, Cat, Mice (2002) ELEANOR LEONNE BENNETT is under the weather (2010) LAURIE LIPTON The Fates (2010) Detail of The Fates SHAREEN KNIGHT Who Shall Watch Over Me? (2010)

---

FICTION	ART
CAROLYN GAGE Becca and the Woman Prince RACHEL STEIGER-MEISTER Rapunzel Bird FICTION GUEST EDITED BY RACHEL STEIGER-MEISTER: LEOPOLDINE CORE & EILEEN MYLES 17 Fairy Tales LUCY CORIN A Woman with a Gardener SARAH SCHULMAN Why Not SUSAN STINSON excerpts from Martha Moody CATHERYNNE M. VALENTE Bones Like Black Sugar	BOOK COVER The Spindle & Other Lesbian Fairy Tales (2010) JOHN BAUER Odin et Sleipnir (1911) SHANTELL MARTIN Need Want (2011) GUSTAVE DORE Cinderella (1866) ROBERT GIARD Sarah Schulman. NYC. (1988) CARLA STEIGER Untitled (2004) KATIE BADENHORST Fairy Tale (2011)

Rhéa Ess

Mistress of the Wife

Mistress of the wife
does that cut like a knife?
probably but on a concrete heart
does it still scratch a mark?
it ought not to
it better not
play not with fire
you’re a burnt child already
in a soggy quagmire.

let lines run
let lines intersect
can’t find easy answers
in a heart dissect -
summer comes summer goes
garrison yourself with arrows and bows;
someone’s unlearning, another’s lesson
for once, for now, for life
the played mistress and the playful wife.

---

Rhéa Ess is a 25 year old writer based in Switzerland. She grew up in India and is 'out' to her parents and close friends. Apart from writing, she loves travelling. Otherwise she is finishing off her doctoral studies in history.

Mady Marie Bourdages

Mady Marie Bourdages, Créature Céleste (2010)

Rose Kelleher

Fingerprinting Mrs. Belyakova

Her hand uncurls, a spindly woodland lily
with five misshapen petals. And inside,
a stamen: a sixth finger, half an inch long,
pressed against the center of her palm,

no bigger than a baby’s pinky toe.
Damp, and unaccustomed to the light,
it seems to blink. She acts like it’s a crime
she’s guilty of, but no, it’s a third eye,

a little spaceman looking at the world
through a square, transparent fingernail,
a joey nestled in its mother’s pouch,
a hidden gesture meant for the unkind.

---

Rose Kelleher is the author of Bundle o' Tinder (Waywiser, 2008). Her poems and essays have appeared in many print and online journals, most recently New Walk and The Raintown Review.

Mady Marie Bourdages

Mady Marie Bourdages, La Nature

Lauren Joslin

Sister, Dear Sister

Common as blackberries, these knock-kneed sisters,
Though I could tell you a pocketful of lies
About the lion heart of this one,
Or the golden tongue of that,
And the many who drowned in their eyes.
No, time hasn't been cruel to them, long though they've lain in the cask.

With them it was the usual score:
One loved less, the other more,
Honeycombs and lemons she gave—rich gifts.
Leaving them on the threshold, claiming ignorance.
Her plaits hung down like dried-out garlands.

She strung a harp from her own black hair,
Tuning it nightly for her sister fair.
But oh, what discordant madrigals, when those fingers touched the strings!
A bitter love indeed,
Ill-suited to a fairy tale.
So the golden girl left with the dawn, in search of a fortune;
That other found hairs in the corners like sunshine
And scavenged the last of the honey.

---

Lauren Joslin is a 25-year old graduate of Boston University from Melrose, Massachusetts. She is currently working in retail and avidly writing always. She is inspired by everything from personal struggles to Medieval history to Santeria. She has been published here and there but hopes to someday be published everywhere and is currently working on a collection of short essays.

Mady Marie Bourdages

Mady Marie Bourdages, Les petits démons de l'Amour

Larry Blazek

A Semi-Material Sailor

I long to dip my aural oar
into the crystal stream
of the mighty Myrthywyth
my curve prow craves to
part the crystal dream
in that crystal myth
Why can’t my sheets
catch that sulfur breeze
that sweeps
down crystal mountains
swaying phosphorescent trees
I turn my back upon the
cubical sun with a shiver;
I quest for Myr;
I long for its crystal river.

---

Larry Blazek writes: I was born in Northern Indiana, but I moved to the southern part because the climate is more suited to cycling and the land is cheap. I have been publishing the magazine-format collage OPOSSUM HOLLER TAROT since 1983. I could use some submissions. I have been published in the THE BAT SHAT, VOX POETICA, LEVELER POETRY, FIVE FISHES, FRONT, and MOUNTAIN FOCUS ART, among many others.

Mady Marie Bourdages

Mady Marie Bourdages, Sans titre

Mary Cresswell

Pied Piper

I will lead you like the falcon
        who lusts over mice scuttering
        across the fields.

I will lead you like the dawn
        who hounds night-time into the sea,
        the tornado who throws the pine trees down.

  I will lead you like the children
        who followed my flute, fading
        into the dark mountain.

When we make the mountain turn us loose,
        you and I will be the flute,
        calling out our own echoes
        to bring the world to us again.

---

Fish Story

        Night-boat pushes through darkness.
        Cargo of tangled threads I try
        in the morning to gloss into words.
        This is the dream-work: to weave, to unweave.
                Michèle Roberts, Penelope awaits the return of Ulysses

We push off into the lagoon,
our white skiff on a glittering day
slips past grasses and skirts the shallows
easily.
Our shadow follows us on sand: a
night-boat pushes through darkness.

Perhaps the shadow helps us float,
perhaps it’s pushing us out to sea,
we aren’t sure.
A bite! I start and yank too fast,
my line snaps back and snarls into a
cargo of tangled threads I try

to restore to reason. Dark clouds
roll in across your face.
Quickly I cut
the knot through, into shreds
which I carefully save and intend
in the morning to gloss into words.

“Remember when?” We’ll laugh
as we tell of another one that got away
constructing
an angled line of success, of fishes
exceeding our wildest hopes.
This is the dream-work: to weave, to unweave.

---

Mary Cresswell is from Los Angeles and lives on the Kapiti Coast of New Zealand. She’s a retired science editor, took up poetry (both light verse and serious) as a pastime, and is now truly addicted. Her third book, Trace Fossils, was published in early 2011. This is her first appearance in Lavender Review, and she’s very pleased to be here.

Mady Marie Bourdages

Mady Marie Bourdages, Baleine Rêveuse

Jan Steckel

Last Spar Shanty

The lady on the prow, boys,
she’s not made for laying.

Whale-crooning wave-rider,
frozen madonna,
mother of merwomen:
she splits the seal-furrow,
plows the rows roiling
while kraken rock her.
Leviathan opens his maw to receive her.

She’ll crumble you like hardtack,
shiver your mainmast,
snap off your tiller,
and pitch you half-way to Greenland—

or drag you straight down
to the sunken king’s hall,
where coral buttresses hold up the roof-beams.
Crown-of-thorns sea star
settles on her forehead,
lapis laps her thighs,
tentacle ropes wind between her breasts,
staghorn coral crests her consort’s head.
A hawk’s-bill turtle’s shell cradles her son.

Seal the dead back in their monuments.
Let sea-wrack settle and wreckage rest.
It’s another century.

---

The Unfortunate Rake

A bed of half lavender, lemon verbena,
with rue for you, hibiscus for me.
You towered above me, your rake in your hand.
You might have been the God of War.
I smiled as the sword came down.
I was ready for the next world.

Dama de Noche drugged the air.
Iris and the wild roaming rose
encircled the calla lilies, trumpets of judgment.
Arboreal snails clung to the crotches
of every fork in the toyon’s branches.
Deer nibbled the agapanthus.
Red newts crawled from under the house.
Scatter ashes in the glass and stir thoroughly.
I’m more than ready for the next world.

Stir the worms and save the snails.
Pry a spider from the ceiling;
deport her to the hearth.
Soon you’ll be flaming armies of spider babies.
Ignited termites wing out of the firewood.
A railroad spike right through my hip.
Six jolly lesbians to carry my coffin.
Stay me with flagons of Manischevitz.
Comfort me with mortar of ground walnuts and crab apples.
Who’s going to write for you when I am gone, gone, gone?
I’m so ready for the next world.

I’m wrapped up in flannel though warm is the day.
I’m ashes. I’ll fall down. You be Pompeii.
I’m compost alive with slugs, earthworms and pill bugs.
Lay me like bark mulch. Spread me like lime.
Scatter your grass seed. If only you’d told me.
I’m already ready for it to be over.
Always drink ashes with plenty of water.
You might have been the God of Love,
laughing as the sword came down,
making me ready for the next world.

---

Jan Steckel is a retired physician, a bisexual and disability rights activist, and a poet and writer. Her Mixing Tracks (Gertrude Press, 2009) won the Gertrude Press fiction chapbook award. Her chapbook The Underwater Hospital (Zeitgeist Press, 2006) won a Rainbow Award for lesbian and bisexual poetry. Her writing has appeared in Scholastic Magazine, Yale Medicine, Bellevue Literary Review, and elsewhere. Her first full-length poetry collection, The Horizontal Poet, is available from Zeitgeist Press.

Mady Marie Bourdages

Mady Marie Bourdages, La mer 4:05 AM, Bonaventure-Est

Siham Karami

Bird of Paradise

The little girl who disappeared
when cut off by her womanhood
now rises like a phantom bird
whose language no one understood

except the birch trees and the wind
and old chairs and familiar stones
long gone, their traces in my mind,
their words a marrow in my bones.

Light in the marrow, iron red,
light on the wings, a diamond glare
against the darkness of the bed,
the arc of flight my only prayer.

And when at last, the shot is fired,
the arrow sails, a shooting star
that lands with what I most desired,
clutched in old hands, bony, poor,

yet fervent. Young heart of my mind,
whom I lost and buried twice,
let this scribe now write, though blind,
your history of paradise.

---

Siham Karami is a mother of five and owner of a technology recycling company. Her work has been published in Innisfree Journal, 14by14, Sonneto Poesia, 4and20, and The Whirlwind Review.

Nancy Macko

Nancy Macko, Thera 5 © 2003, all rights reserved by the artist

Carol Brockfield

I Had to Tell Her

When the words hit
she gave only the slightest sign of comprehension
before her body fell.

Its full weight upon me in that last embrace
        her oh-so-exacting fingers
        the fineness of her wrists
        her child-like bones

erased all thought of that glowing cigarette
between our beds, when the night was warm
and her unseen eyes were not these eyes.

She turned stone cold around me.
There was never any chance of escape.

---

Carol Brockfield is a retired book editor and former member of California's Napa Poet's Collective. Now living in Oregon, she chairs the Rogue Valley chapter of the Oregon Poetry Association, which gives monthly poetry workshops and engages in the promotion of poetry everywhere. Her work has also appeared in Women Writers, flashquake, The Hiss Quarterly, Cimarron Review and In the Garden of the Crow anthology.

Jessica Burke

Jessica Burke, Dissolution of a Fairy Tale (2009)

Ed Bennett

My Sister is Free

Mother read the bedtime tales
as if they were scripture:
bears of varied sizes,
the blonde tressed children
fallen into traps,
rescued and restored
to their happy ending.

Mother read her scripture
with profound belief
in God’s ordered universe,
male and female cloven
by a masculine Deity
who blessed His gender of priests,
left women to their infants.

When my sister broke free
of scripture and Grimm
there was no man in waiting,
was nowhere in her inverted view
a need for priestly remonstrance
or a care for anything truer
than the love she bore within.

Mother has her nightly dose
of St. Paul and Deuteronomy,
shadows of misunderstanding
when her fables do not match
what she cannot call reality.
Mother is snared in bedtime tales.
God knows, my sister is free.

---

Ed Bennett is a Telecommunications Engineer living in Las Vegas and a Staff Editor of Quill and Parchment. Originally from New York City, his work appeared in The Patterson Literary Review, The Externalist, Quill and Parchment, Touch: The Journal of Healing and Lavender Review. He is the author of “A Transit of Venus” published by The Lives You Touch Press.

Ali Liebegott

Ali Liebegott, Do You Have Any Human Friends? (2009)

Risa Denenberg

Yellow Star

In my case, the yellow star
will be made of two perfect pink triangles,
cut from cheap dry goods at the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory
where the women
sew stars on at the ready
hunched over their Singers
and, not wasting time on stairs,
work right up until closing time, then jump.

They didn’t want to die so young
and neither did the gay boys who died in droves
at the close of last century. I would be one
who would beg you to shoot me,
who would know that borders lie,
that I could not endure the march through the woods
in the snow to the trains at the end.

We who say never forget
also know that it could happen again
to us
and we do not know more now
about how to make it stop.

The stitching never ends. For practice,
I have sutured my arm to my sleeve
with triangles made from pages torn
from the Book of Job.

---

Risa Denenberg is an aging hippie currently living in Tacoma, Washington. She earns her keep as a nurse practitioner and freelance medical writer. Recent poems have appeared online at Sein und Werden, Mudlark, Scythe, Chimaera, and THIS Literary Magazine. Risa blogs about poetry, aging, death and other matters here.

Stefanie Schneider

Stefanie Schneider, The Muse (2009)

Mitchell Geller

Rapunzel Explains

It wasn’t a case of Stockholm Syndrome;
I loved her from the first, as she loved me.
She saved me from that drunk, abusive home—
no captive was I, but a refugee.
Her kindness flooded me with gratitude,
which ripened, over time, to something more;
at fifteen years old, it was I who wooed,
and she who awakened. For years she wore
her spinsterhood as a mantle of shame—
now, wrapped—and rapt—by my long sunlit hair,
she knows who she is, she gives it a name,
as warmth and loving vanquish her despair.
And, having rebuffed that rather dim prince,
we’ve spent our lives together ever since.

---

Miss Remington’s Reverie
Lancaster Gate, Bayswater, 1898

My father was a friend of John Stuart Mill’s,
and firmly felt no daughter would be duller
than one who learned such marriageable skills
as to sing, to sew, and paint in watercolour.
He needn’t have worried, that much is certain—
we fell in love instantly, and forever.
Jane was the loveliest girl at Girton—
amusing and kind and dazzlingly clever.
We moved back to London in ‘eighty-three,
and opened our school in Lancaster Gate—
The parents gladly pay our staggering fee;
nearly all our students matriculate.
We’ve a charming flat on the second floor
with two bed chambers—and one connecting door.

---

Mitchell Geller is a poet and essayist. Born and raised in Greater Boston, where he still resides, he has a BA in English Literature, and did his graduate studies in Children’s Literature. His work has appeared in The Melic Review, Sonnetto Poesia, WORM, The Loch Raven Review, Umbrella, and 14 x14. In 2009 his poem “Monarch Nmemonic” won 1st prize in the annual New England Shakespeare Festival Sonnet Competition.

Lady Clementina Hawarden

Lady Clementina Hawarden, Two Women on a Balcony (c. 1864)

Timothy Murphy

Heaven on Earth

Here’s a deep dream our Lady sent last night:
My cousin’s called an idiot savant,
eidetic memory. He cannot write
or read, yet he remembers word for word
each scrap of scripture he has ever heard
at Daily Masses. Satan couldn’t daunt
his innocence with Hell’s seductive powers,
Christ so much in and with him all his days
that every path he strolls is strewn with flowers.
However absentmindedly he strays,
he’s Jeremiah’s “sacrifice of praise.”

Waking in smiles, refreshed, I know that this
glimpse of serene and inward-gazing bliss
is meant to turn my steps from an abyss.

---

The Dakota Institute Press has published Timothy Murphy’s three newest books this year, Mortal Stakes/Faint Thunder, a double volume, in August, and Hunter's Log, in October. Click here.

Jane Lewis

Jane Lewis, Veil Study (2000)

Barbara Egel

Lilly Britten

A silly city kitten lingered, sitting on a sill
while behind her, Lilly Britten knitted mittens.
Lil insists on rigid living: she’s a prim and bitter pill,
and she’s weary of the wool and bitchy kitten.

Lilly Britten once was smitten with a girl of iron will
whose attention merits mention, being wholly Lil’s invention.
Lilly built a sylvan hilltop for the surly girl and her,
a dwelling she defended against any—mostly men.
But that tender den of heaven dwelt, bereft, inside her head.
Lilly tended to her passion in her rash imagination—
giant slabs of fabrication that would someday have to crash in.
Of course, inside her daydream, Lil was Lancelot in bed—
a juicy, cool seducer who could loosen, lick, and bruise her,
taxing synapses’ endurance, turning neurons into fizz.
This tortured, torrid courtship born of horniness and boredom
tore through all of her decorum until—forced into confession—
Lil at last declared her passion.
The surly girl, thus burdened, turned upon our hurting virgin,
“I am dirty with your words and with your irksome, nervous flirting
and am certain to prefer that you should surely go away.”

Years later, still not mated, Lil is chilly and deflated
by the state that she created and the surly girl, now hated.
On the sill the kitten lingers as the wool winds round Lil’s fingers.
In a city rich with sinners, Lil’s is such a mingy sin:
The humiliated spinster who takes bitchy kittens in.

---

Barbara Egel lives in Chicago where she works as a consumer research consultant. She is the author of several licensed children’s books in both prose and verse. Her poems have appeared in Northeast Corridor and the anthology Between the Leaves.

Catherine Eyde

Stella, Cat, Mice - copyright 2002 Catherine Eyde

Gail White

Woman Into Tree

Greek myth records the known (but hated) fact
that women do not always want men’s love.
Some, in the struggle to avoid the act
and keep their would-be mates at one remove,
have called on heaven to destroy their shape.
Most were not answered. Many were betrayed.
But lucky Daphne spoiled Appollo’s rape:
Her lips grew rough, bark-covered as they prayed;
her raised arms stiffened into boughs to sift
white blossoms on the god’s defeated pride.
How many girls inherited the gift
of Daphne? Under flowering lips they hide
the bitter taste of bark, and no one sees
how many sweet words fall from walking trees.

---

Gail White has recent work in First Things, Able Muse, Evansville Review, and other journals. Her new chapbook, Sonnets in a Hostile World, is now available at Amazon. She lives on Bayou Teche in Breaux Bridge, Louisiana. "Woman Into Tree" first appeared in Soundzine.

Eleanor Leonne Bennett

Eleanor Leonne Bennett, is under the weather (2010)

Eleanor Lerman

The Witch Deliberates

What does memory want, do you think,
with its feverish demands? Yes, demands:
it does not lift the curtains with lacy fingers
or regurgitate someone else’s (clearly,
someone else’s) dream of childhood,
but unfolds a raw, red sky and claims
to know about hotel rooms, disappearances
On a broken foot, with a broken mind,
down a dead road—that was my life?
Who says I have to admit it? Would you?

My plan was always to feign ignorance
I thought if we behaved, we would escape
Type, type, type. I did the letters, I ate my
dinner. Now I would like my medicine, please,

and if they don’t sell it anymore, then sell me
something else. The past, at least, was built
on principle (I am angry, I am baffled,
I hate school), but the future is gaining
speed. Each random, savage tomorrow
makes us into something, but what?

But what? Just let me go, said the child
in the garden as all the bunny rabbits
ran away. Maybe, said the witch, but you
look real good to me. And so the witch
deliberates; the child gauges its strength
In a dark, dark woodland, one can only
imagine what kind of magic is afoot

---

A Book of Spells

In a railroad apartment, on a certain street,
in a neighborhood that has since changed
        its name, you open your book
Sitting at a table; cold tea in a cup, the cup
        on a plastic tablecloth
It is a summer afternoon. The curtains are still

What will be written about your life will begin:
In a railroad apartment, he or she opened
         a book of spells
and began to study. Little more is known

But I know. Not what you were looking for:
that is your secret. Not who you were: I don’t
        think I care
There are other matters in this age, this era
        that are personal to me
I would like to make reference to them, but
        am prevented, or simply unable
Not that I like to bring myself into these
discussions, but there is a kind of now that
         cracks overhead, resounds
like a temple gong. And now is the time

Why? Because it is not a dream, the way
        these years pass by
Because there is no way to measure what
        falls away; it cannot be known
And yet, there are still questions I want to
        ask you:
What are the forces that work through us?
Where should we live? What should we do?

What is written about your life will include,
The room was ill-furnished, but I
        know better
It had stripped itself bare for you. It held
        its breath

---

Eleanor Lerman is the author of five books of poetry and two collections of short stories. Her first novel, Janet Planet, was published in 2011. She is a National Book Award Nominee, the recipient of the 2006 Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize from the Academy of American Poets and the Nation magazine for the year's most outstanding book of poetry, a 2007 Poetry Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts and a Guggenheim Poetry Fellowship in 2011. Her most recent work is a video collaboration with her brother, Philip Lerman, supporting Occupy Wall Street: on YouTube.

Laurie Lipton

"The Fates", charcoal & graphite on paper, 90 x 70 cms, ©Laurie Lipton

"The Fates" (detail), charcoal & graphite on paper, 90 x 70 cms, ©Laurie Lipton

Let me hold your heart like a flower

Rapunzel
Anne Sexton

---

A woman
who loves a woman
is forever young.
The mentor
and the student
feed off each other.
Many a girl
had an old aunt
who locked her in the study
to keep the boys away.
They would play rummy
or lie on the couch
and touch and touch.
Old breast against young breast...
Let your dress fall down your shoulder,

come touch a copy of you
for I am at the mercy of rain,
for I have left the three Christs of Ypsilanti
for I have left the long naps of Ann Arbor
and the church spires have turned to stumps.
The sea bangs into my cloister
for the politicians are dying,
and dying so hold me, my young dear,
hold me...
The yellow rose will turn to cinder

and New York City will fall in
before we are done so hold me,
my young dear, hold me.
Put your pale arms around my neck.
Let me hold your heart like a flower
lest it bloom and collapse.
Give me your skin
as sheer as a cobweb,
let me open it up
and listen in and scoop out the dark.
Give me your nether lips
all puffy with their art
and I will give you angel fire in return.
We are two clouds
glistening in the bottle glass.
We are two birds
washing in the same mirror.
We were fair game
but we have kept out of the cesspool.
We are strong.
We are the good ones.
Do not discover us
for we lie together all in green
like pond weeds.
Hold me, my young dear, hold me.
They touch their delicate watches

one at a time.
They dance to the lute
two at a time.
They are as tender as bog moss.
They play mother-me-do
all day.
A woman
who loves a woman
is forever young.

---

The Witch
Mary Elizabeth Coleridge

I have walked a great while over the snow,
And I am not tall nor strong.
My clothes are wet, and my teeth are set,
And the way was hard and long.
I have wandered over the fruitful earth,
But I never came here before.
Oh, lift me over the threshold, and let me in at the door!

The cutting wind is a cruel foe.
I dare not stand in the blast.
My hands are stone, and my voice a groan,
And the worst of death is past.
I am but a little maiden still,
My little white feet are sore.
Oh, lift me over the threshold, and let me in at the door!

Her voice was the voice that women have,
Who plead for their heart's desire.
She came—she came—and the quivering flame
Sunk and died in the fire.
It never was lit again on my hearth
Since I hurried across the floor,
To lift her over the threshold, and let her in at the door.

---

The Changeling
Charlotte Mew

Toll no bell for me, dear Father, dear Mother,
        Waste no sighs;
There are my sisters, there is my little brother
     Who plays in the place called Paradise
Your children all, your children for ever;
                But I, so wild,
Your disgrace, with the queer brown face, was never,
     Never, I know, but half your child!

In the garden at play, all day, last summer,
                Far and away I heard
The sweet ‘tweet-tweet’ of a strange new-comer,
     The dearest, clearest call of a bird.
It lived down there in the deep green hollow,
     My own old home, and the fairies say
The word of a bird is a thing to follow,
     So I was away a night and a day.

One evening, too, by the nursery fire,
     We snuggled close and sat round so still,
When suddenly as the wind blew higher,
     Something scratched on the window-sill.
A pinched brown face peered in — I shivered;
     No one listened or seemed to see;
The arms of it waved and the wings of it quivered,
     Whoo — I knew it had come for me;
     Some are as bad as bad can be!
All night long they danced in the rain,
Round and round in a dripping chain,
Threw their caps at the window-pane,
     Tried to make me scream and shout
     And fling the bedclothes all about:
I meant to stay in bed that night,
And if only you had left a light
     They would never have got me out.

     Sometimes I wouldn’t speak, you see,
     Or answer when you spoke to me,
Because in the long, still dusks of Spring
You can hear the whole world whispering;
     The shy green grasses making love,
     The feathers grow on the dear, grey dove,
     The tiny heart of the redstart beat,
     The patter of the squirrel’s feet,
The pebbles pushing in the silver streams,
The rushes talking in their dreams,
     The swish-swish of the bat’s black wings,
     The wild-wood bluebell’s sweet ting-tings,
          Humming and hammering at your ear,
          Everything there is to hear
In the heart of hidden things,
     But not in the midst of the nursery riot,
     That’s why I wanted to be quiet,
          Couldn’t do my sums, or sing,
          Or settle down to anything.
     And when, for that, I was sent upstairs
     I did kneel down to say my prayers;
But the King who sits on your high church steeple
Has nothing to do with us fairy people!

Times I pleased you, dear Father, dear Mother,
     Learned all my lessons and liked to play,
And dearly I loved the little pale brother
     Whom some other bird must have called away.
Why did They bring me here to make me
     Not quite bad and not quite good,
Why, unless They’re wicked, do They want, in spite, to take me
     Back to their wet, wild wood?
Now, every night, I shall see the windows shining,
     The gold lamp’s glow, and the fire’s red gleam,
While the best of us are twining twigs and the rest of us are whining
          In the hollow by the stream.
Black and chill are Their nights in the wold;
     And They live so long and They feel no pain;
I shall grow up, but never grow old,
I shall always, always be very cold,
          I shall never come back again!

---

A Fairy Tale
Amy Lowell

On winter nights beside the nursery fire
We read the fairy tale, while glowing coals
Builded its pictures. There before our eyes
We saw the vaulted hall of traceried stone
Uprear itself, the distant ceiling hung
With pendent stalactites like frozen vines;
And all along the walls at intervals,
Curled upwards into pillars, roses climbed,
And ramped and were confined, and clustered leaves
Divided where there peered a laughing face.
The foliage seemed to rustle in the wind,
A silent murmur, carved in still, gray stone.
High pointed windows pierced the southern wall
Whence proud escutcheons flung prismatic fires
To stain the tessellated marble floor
With pools of red, and quivering green, and blue;
And in the shade beyond the further door,
Its sober squares of black and white were hid
Beneath a restless, shuffling, wide-eyed mob
Of lackeys and retainers come to view
The Christening.
A sudden blare of trumpets, and the throng
About the entrance parted as the guests
Filed singly in with rare and precious gifts.
Our eager fancies noted all they brought,
The glorious, unattainable delights!
But always there was one unbidden guest
Who cursed the child and left it bitterness.

The fire falls asunder, all is changed,
I am no more a child, and what I see
Is not a fairy tale, but life, my life.
The gifts are there, the many pleasant things:
Health, wealth, long-settled friendships, with a name
Which honors all who bear it, and the power
Of making words obedient. This is much;
But overshadowing all is still the curse,
That never shall I be fulfilled by love!
Along the parching highroad of the world
No other soul shall bear mine company.
Always shall I be teased with semblances,
With cruel impostures, which I trust awhile
Then dash to pieces, as a careless boy
Flings a kaleidoscope, which shattering
Strews all the ground about with coloured sherds.
So I behold my visions on the ground
No longer radiant, an ignoble heap
Of broken, dusty glass. And so, unlit,
Even by hope or faith, my dragging steps
Force me forever through the passing days.

---

Goblin Market
Christina Rossetti

Morning and evening
Maids heard the goblins cry:
“Come buy our orchard fruits,
Come buy, come buy:
Apples and quinces,
Lemons and oranges,
Plump unpeck’d cherries,
Melons and raspberries,
Bloom-down-cheek’d peaches,
Swart-headed mulberries,
Wild free-born cranberries,
Crab-apples, dewberries,
Pine-apples, blackberries,
Apricots, strawberries;—
All ripe together
In summer weather,—
Morns that pass by,
Fair eves that fly;
Come buy, come buy:
Our grapes fresh from the vine,
Pomegranates full and fine,
Dates and sharp bullaces,
Rare pears and greengages,
Damsons and bilberries,
Taste them and try:
Currants and gooseberries,
Bright-fire-like barberries,
Figs to fill your mouth,
Citrons from the South,
Sweet to tongue and sound to eye;
Come buy, come buy.”

           Evening by evening
Among the brookside rushes,
Laura bow’d her head to hear,
Lizzie veil’d her blushes:
Crouching close together
In the cooling weather,
With clasping arms and cautioning lips,
With tingling cheeks and finger tips.
“Lie close,” Laura said,
Pricking up her golden head:
“We must not look at goblin men,
We must not buy their fruits:
Who knows upon what soil they fed
Their hungry thirsty roots?”
“Come buy,” call the goblins
Hobbling down the glen.


...click here to read the rest of "Goblin Market"...

Shareen Knight

Who Shall Watch Over Me? - detail from Voices of the World © 2010 Shareen Knight.
All rights reserved. Reproduction without specific written permission is prohibited.

Carolyn Gage

Becca and the Woman Prince

                                        This story is dedicated to the memory of Fannyann Eddy.

Once upon a time, there was a princess named Becca who lived in a kingdom with her father and mother and a great number of subjects, which is why Becca grew up as an object. Becca was a curious, white girl, and she noticed everything around her. She noticed that the castle floors were always shiny on Tuesday and dull on Monday. She noticed that the great cats who roamed the palace halls never came when they were called, which is why no one ever called them. And she noticed that when she played with her marbles, people always told her to do it somewhere else. Becca asked a lot of questions, but, even more than that, she made observations. At dinner, she would want to talk about the green beans, and whether or not the way you slice them affects the way they taste. At breakfast, she would want to talk about the ponies in the meadow, and how they toss their heads, and why. And at the noon hour, she was likely to talk about the dam she built in the creek, or the insect larva she had found, or the great owl in the oak tree. But no one ever listened to Becca. Around the palace she was known as Becca the Bore, or Becca the Boring, or the Princess Who Bores Everyone. And the more people cut her off, or got up and left in the middle of a conversation, or changed the subject, the more Becca would talk to herself. Finally, the king, in exasperation, decided that the best thing to do would be to marry her off to a prince who lived in another kingdom. He sent out announcements that Princess Becca was accepting suitors. And, of course, he sent out miniature paintings of the princess with these announcements. These bore little resemblance to Becca, but that was generally the way with these sorts of portraits, and the princes who would respond probably knew that anyway. And so the first batch of suitors arrived. They were cordial, correct, and uncomfortable. In fact, the best part of their visit was the soccer match they arranged on Saturdays among themselves. Becca came down the second Saturday to play with them, she being very skilled with her feet, but the princes all got uncomfortable again, and pretty soon Becca found herself on an empty field, kicking the ball around. The courtship was very structured, and for an hour in the morning and then an hour in the evening, one or another of them would come and talk with Becca in her bower –properly chaperoned, of course. Becca was charmed to have company that would pay attention to her and not leave for an hour, and she talked almost incessantly. She would occasionally pause for her companion to jump in, but princes are a dull lot, and they couldn’t see any point in saying anything, since the courtship of a princess has very little to do with whether or not you actually like her. Pretty soon it was coming to the informal end of the first round of formal suitors. The king waited daily for the request for an audience with him that would indicate that one of them was going to ask for her hand. But the king waited in vain. The princes had decided among themselves that there was something definitely wrong with Becca. Apparently, she did not understand her role at all, which at this stage of the game—even before the wedding vows!—was pretty disconcerting. They tried to imagine what it would be like to ride back to their kingdoms with Becca talking the whole time, or what they would do if she started insisting on joining them in the hunt or for tournaments. Really, she seemed capable of anything! And it was difficult for any of them to feel the sort of manly throb that portends a happy marriage, when the intended object of their desire showed not one shred of passivity, helplessness, or submissive behavior. And so the princes took their leave, each one called suddenly home by some unspecified crisis in the family. Becca dutifully stood on the battlements and waved them off. She was not aware that she had been rejected, because she had never seen herself as up for sale in the first place. The whole thing had been an interesting diversion. The king sent out a second round of announcements, this time to kingdoms far across the sea, to strange lands where foreign languages were spoken and where the customs and the people were very different from his own. Because of the unfortunate reports that would inevitably circulate from the first round of suitors, the lack of a common language could prove to be an advantage. These suitors came also, but it seems that Becca’s behaviors transgressed all cultural borders. The second round of suitors left much as had the first. At this point, the queen stepped in. She hired “tutors” for Becca. She recruited the most fashionable women at court to instruct her daughter in the art of dressing like a princess. Becca was fascinated, and she asked so many questions about the point of ribbons and lacings and frills, and so many questions about why some women wore fancy clothes and why others wore homespun, and she made so many comments on the effect of fashion on the physiology of the body that the ladies became self-conscious and, finally, exasperated. They reported to the queen that Becca was making fun of them. Becca, as usual, was oblivious to the effect she had on those around her. The queen hired women skilled in the art of talking to men, which, more accurately put, is the art of listening to men. Becca found the stratagems fascinating, and she enjoyed role-playing the part of the men during the teaching sessions, but when confronted with the real thing, she could never restrain herself from jumping in with corrections or questions about whatever the man had said. Finally, both the king and queen gave up, and Becca was left to her long walks, to her books, paintings, building projects, scientific experiments, and music. And so things went on for a few more years. And then one day a stranger strode up to the gates of the castle and announced her intention to woo the Princess Becca. This warrior from another culture wore a loose-fitting smock over tight trousers, with a bow slung across her back. Around her neck, on a string of bright beads, was one of the battered miniatures sent out by Becca’s father. She came bearing a sack of kola nuts to offer to Becca. Her skin was as dark as Becca’s was light, and her short hair grew in tight coils close to her scalp. The king and queen were flustered. It never occurred to them that a woman would court their daughter. Such a thing had never been done before. Or, perhaps, the queen had a sister somewhere who never married and lived with another spinster, and maybe the king could remember a distant cousin who had a similar arrangement. But surely these were women who couldn’t get a husband. Surely they had not chosen such a life! The royal pair called in their advisors. The advisors advised them to determine the status of the visitor before they did anything to offend her. Perhaps female marriages were customary in her kingdom… or queendom… ? And so they called in the Woman Prince, for such, indeed, she was. When it was suggested by the chancellor that “Woman Prince” was synonymous with “Princess,” the visitor fixed a steely eye on the unfortunate man until his arguments crumbled right out of his mouth. And so the Woman Prince, whose name was Ymoja, was accepted as a prince, and it was determined that, as a prince, she had a right to court the Princess Becca. Becca, as was usually the case with things regarding her welfare, was told nothing—only to expect a prince for lunch. Becca was seated in her bower, kicking her soccer ball around under her long skirt and nibbling the corners off the watercress sandwiches, while she waited for her new visitor. She had been experimenting with plant decoctions all morning, trying to extract the scent from roses, and her hands were stained yellow. The Woman Prince was escorted into the bower by Becca’s former governess, who was the chaperon for these occasions. Ymoja froze when she caught sight of the Princess, who was at that very moment executing a kick that sent the tea table and the sandwiches flying. The governess began to scold her for being so careless, but the Woman Prince trapped the ball between her strong ankles and then gave it a sharp kick which sent it sailing over Becca’s head and through the open window behind her. Becca scrambled over the back of the bench to see where it landed. The leather ball had just cleared the moat, landing in a pile of rushes on the far side, where it flushed out a pair of disgruntled ducks. Disguising her admiration, Becca turned to the Woman Prince: “I hope you know you’re going to have to go and get it.” The Woman Prince turned to the chaperon. The chaperon, at a loss to interpret for the Woman Prince, turned to Becca. Becca, never at a loss, used her hands to explain how the Woman Prince would need to leave the chamber, go all the way back down the great staircase, cross over the lowered drawbridge, climb into the mud, retrieve the ball from the duck nest, and bring it back to her. The Woman Prince stood shaking her head from side to side, until, finally, Becca, completely exasperated, took her by the arm and pulled her toward the door herself, and all the way down the great staircase, and out across the castle drawbridge. The chaperon, who had not had her lunch, stayed behind and finished Becca’s sandwiches. Becca continued to talk the whole way down to the moat—which was not unusual, although she did incorporate more gestures into her speech than was her custom. When the two girls reached the far bank of the moat, where the soccer ball lay in the mud, Becca pointed to the mud and then to the Woman Prince. The Woman Prince nodded gravely, as if she understood, pointing to the mud and then back to the Princess. This went on for a few minutes, each taking turns pointing and nodding, until finally the Princess realized that the Woman Prince was mocking her. Becca had been making a fool of herself by treating the Woman Prince like an idiot, just because she didn’t speak Becca’s language. Becca smiled at her own stupidity, retrieved the ball, and began to head back to the palace. The Woman Prince reached out her hand and stopped her. Ymoja took the ball from Becca’s hand and set it on a level patch of ground. Then, lifting up her foot slowly and placing it very gently on top of the ball, she turned her head and looked solemnly at the Princess. Becca solemnly reached down and pulled the back hem of her skirt up, between her legs, and tucked it into the front of her waistband. She gave the ball a solid boot, and the two women took off. They ran and kicked and rolled until they were both covered with dust and sweat and were feeling very good about themselves. Becca smiled at her new friend and said, “I want to learn your language. Teach me.” The Woman Prince understood exactly what Becca was asking, and she answered, in her own language, “I will.” And so every day and all day, the Woman Prince and Becca would get together and teach each other their languages. Very soon, they could communicate well enough to disagree, and this was a great thing for Becca, because no one had ever taken her seriously enough to argue. Their voices would ring out loudly all over the palace, as they ran up the stairs and down the garden paths, talking, shouting, laughing… talking, talking, talking. The Woman Prince taught Becca about her home in West Africa, Mali, which she called “the Bright Country.” She showed Becca her “sassa,” a goatskin pouch with magic charms which she carried with her at all times, explaining how the “jinn,” or spirits, caused trouble for anyone caught without their “sassa.” And the Woman Prince talked about the “simbon,” or hunters in her country, and how they were protected by two hunter gods, and how these two male gods would become very angry unless their names were always said together, because they were so deeply in love with each other. The Woman Prince spoke of many things, but she never spoke of her family or of the women from her country. The more Becca listened to the Woman Prince, the more she began to notice things—things she had always overlooked, even though they had been right in front of her for years. And one of the things she began to notice were boots, especially the boots the guardsmen wore when they were on duty at the palace. One day, Becca asked one of the guardsmen where he got his boots. He told her they were issued by special order of the king. And so Becca went to her father. She wanted a pair of boots, she told him. They were better for riding, better for hiking, and a lot better for soccer. She explained about how her slippers kept coming off every time she got in a good kick, and how this prevented her from following through with a goal. The king sat and listened gravely, nodding his head as if he could sympathize. And so Becca drew out a pattern of her feet for him, gave him a pair of her most comfortable slippers, and handed him a rough sketch of the kind of lacings she had in mind for the boots. The king sat for a long time looking at the drawing of the boots. He continued to look at the drawing long after Becca had left. He did not send for a shoemaker. He sent for his wife. And she looked at the drawing of the boots. And then she looked at the king. They had been willing to allow the Woman Prince to court their daughter. They had even been willing to allow the Woman Prince to marry Becca and take her away to a foreign country. But they were not willing to allow her to turn their daughter into a prince. Two princes certainly couldn’t marry, not even two women princes. And who would ever want their daughter after she had made herself into a prince? It was bad enough that she talked all the time. The king and the queen realized that they needed to act quickly. Today it was the boots, tomorrow it might be trousers, and who knew after that? Would she want to inherit the kingdom, too? It was a bad business, this Woman Prince affair. The next morning, the Woman Prince was summoned to the king’s chamber. He had all of his chancellors lined up behind him. The Woman Prince was asked to sit, but she declined. The king, flustered, ordered the chair removed. And then he got down to his point: A mistake had been made. The Princess Becca had apparently been betrothed at birth to a prince from a neighboring kingdom, but because of some remodeling that had been going on in the document room at the time, the record of this arrangement had gotten mislaid, and it had only just recently come to light. He, the king, was embarrassed to inform her of this, having granted the Woman Prince permission to court his daughter, and certainly no other prince had ever given his daughter so much pleasure, which only made this meeting twice as painful for him. The Woman Prince had not moved a muscle since the removal of the chair. She did not look happy and she did not look sad. She stood like a statue. The king kept coming to the end of sentences, and looking expectantly at her. When she didn’t move, he would ramble on with another stream of so-of-course-you-see’s and believe-me-nothing-would-have-pleased-me-more’s. Eventually even the king ran out of stock phrases. Winding down like a toy drummer, he finally folded his hands and turned to his chancellors, who were making a point of staring straight ahead. The king gave up and looked at his lap. There was a long silence. Finally, the Woman Prince said something. Using the king’s language, she asked, “Will that be all?” The king nodded miserably, and the Woman Prince turned sharply and swept a contemptuous gaze across the faces of the chancellors, like a teacher wiping an insult off the chalkboard, and then she exited. The Woman Prince went directly to Becca. Becca was astonished. She puzzled over who this prince could be, and how was it that no one had ever mentioned such a thing to her. The Woman Prince finally exploded, in her own language: “There is no prince.” Becca looked up, amazed. She spoke in her own language: “What do you mean?” The Woman Prince for the first and only time in her life looked at Becca with contempt. Becca felt a pain unlike anything she had ever experienced. And in that instant, she knew that she would leave her castle, leave her people, leave her language, leave her innocence about the world—that she would leave everything she had ever known and learn another whole way of living in order that this woman whom she loved with all her heart and all her soul and all her body would never, never in her life, ever, have a reason to look at her that way again. And she knew that the price could be nothing less. Becca rose. “I understand,” she said in the language of the Woman Prince. “I will leave this place. I will leave tonight.” The Woman Prince looked at her. Becca was standing, but she was not as tall as the Woman Prince, and she needed to tilt her head in order to look into her eyes. She repeated, “I will leave this place. Tonight.” The Woman Prince, in a palace of lies, in a palace of liars, looked long and hard into Becca’s eyes. “I won’t take you,” she said. Becca, stung for a second time by her lover—but this time by her words, answered her, “I didn’t ask you to. I am leaving because I don’t belong here.” She turned to leave, but something didn’t seem right. She turned back to the Woman Prince, and took off her ring. She held it out to her. “I want to give this to you, because I love you.” The Woman Prince looked at the ring, an expensive ring, a white woman’s ring, the ring of a princess. And then she looked at Becca. Becca nodded, and put the ring back on her own finger. Great tears began to roll down her cheeks. The Woman Prince knew they were not for her. She knew they were the tears of a white girl who for once could not have what she wanted. And she turned and left before the tears rolled down her own cheeks, tears for an African Woman Prince who was so brave, so very alone in a palace of liars. And that night, the queen drank more wine that she had in years—maybe as much wine as she had the night she and her girlfriend had gotten drunk and spent the night together almost forty years ago. The king took a potion, because he didn’t like the night. Becca stuffed the cracks around the door and the windows of her bedroom, so that the light wouldn’t shine through, and she packed. She packed carefully, for the first time in her life having to worry about survival. In a way, her great heart-ache made the task easier. What could she fear when she had already lost the greatest thing in her life? The Woman Prince paced the battlements, which were outside the large window of her chamber. She had come here—why? She had seen a picture of the white princess. Why had she come? Because in her kingdom they had no use for Woman Princes. Because her brothers were the ones who would inherit the kingdom. Because, where she came from, the women would be given in marriage to the men. Because this was a chance to go somewhere different, to start all over. What had she been thinking? And if she had married Becca, where did she think she could take her? Back to her homeland, where Becca would see that Ymoja was only a princess in her own kingdom and not a Woman Prince at all? Wasn’t this the ending she had known would have to happen all along? Stupid, stupid woman. Stupid. And part of her heart was hardened against the love of a soft, white girl who had been content to be a princess. And part of her heart cried out for that girl, because they had laughed and wrestled and argued and played soccer. And the great and proud Woman Prince paced until the light of dawn began to appear in the sky. And then she heard the sound of the drawbridge being lowered, slowly—oh, so slowly. And with a shock, she saw Becca—Becca in boots!—leading her little, speckled pony across the drawbridge. And then, she saw her throw a bundle up on the saddle and swing herself onto the back of the pony. Becca, who didn’t even know how to build a fire! Becca, who had no idea what the world was like! Becca, her lover, was riding out alone across the misty fields! And in an instant, a blind and rushing instant, the Woman Prince tore back into her room, snatched up her bow and her sassa, and dashed down the great stairway, through the castle gate, and into the courtyard. She ran past the sleeping castle guards, past the dazed gatekeeper with his stocking feet and his shiny new gold piece. The drawbridge was still down and, racing over it, the Woman Prince could just see Becca on her pony in the distance. She lifted her voice and called out with her fiercest warrior cry, a cry that pierced the fog and rang across the damp fields as she broke into the long, even strides that had carried her so many miles from her African homeland—strides that now carried her toward the red glow of the newly-risen sun. In the morning, the king and the queen were not surprised to hear that the Woman Prince was gone. That she had left all her belongings behind did seem odd, but no one really wanted to talk about the episode, and the queen ordered the things to be discretely packed into a chest and labeled and carried down to the cellar—in case the Woman Prince should send for them. After all, this was as much a question of diplomacy as hospitality. There was a note on the princess’ door that she did not want to see anybody or talk to anybody. And, frankly, nobody wanted to see her or talk to her—and so the note, the door, and the princess were left undisturbed. It was not until the second day, when the servants began to whisper about whether or not the princess was eating, that the queen felt compelled to knock on her door. Too embarrassed to admit that her daughter would not speak to her, she reported that Becca had a sick headache and wished to be left alone. As usual, it was the working women who figured out what was really going on: no food, no water, and especially no chamber pots to be emptied… ! Either the princess was killing herself or she was not there. On the third day, one of the maids took it upon herself to climb out on the ledge of the castle wall and peer into the window of Becca’s bedroom. The room looked as if a whirlwind had torn through it. Chests lay open with all their contents spilling out, clothing was strewn all over the bed, and the bed itself was torn apart—but no princess. The queen became hysterical. The Woman Prince had kidnapped her daughter and was holding her for ransom! The king made unfortunate remarks about foreigners in general and women princes in particular. But, as always, it was the working women who figured out the truth. They noted that the mayhem in Becca’s room was not indicative of a bloody struggle, but of a hasty flight. The ransacking, chaotic as it appeared, actually represented a thorough but hurried search for items whose existence, value, and whereabouts could have been known only to their owner. Besides, anyone who had ever seen the two women playing together would have known how utterly unthinkable it was that either one of them should dominate the other for a minute longer than might be absolutely necessary to kick a field goal. And so the queen, who had made a fool of herself by reporting the conversation with Becca, retreated to her bedchamber—and her wine—with her own sick headache. And the king, with some embarrassment, ordered destroyed the posters announcing a reward for the capture of the Woman Prince. A great silence descended on the castle. Becca’s things were bundled together into several chests, labeled, and sent to the cellar, also. And the queen ordered that a lock be placed on the door to Becca’s room. The chancellors, the king, and the queen never made mention again of either Becca or the Woman Prince, and the servants learned to follow their example—at least when they were not among themselves. As the years went by, rumors began to reach the palace of two girl knights—one black and one white—who were riding about the neighboring kingdoms punishing acts of violence against women and teaching girls to defend themselves. There were some who swore the whole thing was a myth, and there were others who believed in the knights, but who insisted they were two young men. And there were others—young girls of a marriageable age, mostly—who just disappeared one night and were never seen again by their families. Years and years later, after wars and famines and plagues had ravaged the kingdom of Becca’s childhood, a rumor reached the ears of the aging king. The queen, alas, had died many years earlier from an unfortunate fall from her bedchamber window. The rumor was this: That at the very remotest corner at the far ends of the earth stood a small cottage, and a lovely garden with a creek running through it, and in this cottage lived two older women—one black and the other white—who had many visitors from near and far, but always women. And these visitors would come away struck by how much the two women loved their garden, and how much they loved their animals, and how much they loved their charming home… But the thing that would impress the visitors the most was how much the two women loved—absolutely loved—talking to each other.

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"Becca and the Woman Prince" was originally published in Lesbian Love Stories II, edi. by Irene Zahava. Also published in The Spindle and Other Lesbian Fairy Tales by Carolyn Gage.

Carolyn Gage is a lesbian‑feminist playwright, performer, director, and activist. The author of nine books on lesbian theatre and sixty-five plays, musicals, and one-woman shows, she specializes in non-traditional roles for women, especially those reclaiming famous lesbians whose stories have been distorted or erased from history.