Our author recently read Emma Cline's "The Girls" and discusses her thoughts and our fascination with cults and true crime.

To blame her is the way of a stark summer rain.

Resist the cheer of thunder behind your head.

A mischievous glint in the eye of the team captain.

A foolish girl beckons me atop the hill.

Together we drop into the lake.

Charm and provoke is the character

I love the most, how could I not

cheer for the villain.

I’m furious, you’re loud,

yet we couldn’t make a sound

in our twelve foot hole in the dirt.

Pray for the burning souls of Montague.

I fit perfectly in your freezing palms

So hold me in front of the garden gates

and steal my fate.

A deep slumber is all you have been.

Say farewell to the calls you miss

as you reach out with your nihilistic whims

just to play the victim you made me out to be.

Tuck yourself into a dreadful rest

for a nightmare is all we’ve ever been.

xx zjf

Peter Pan, Wendy, Tinker-bell

which is the way to Neverland?

Stumbled into the rabbits trap to Oz

Who would’ve dreamed of a city so blood red.

Infidelity punished by a chopped head

courtesy of the Queen of Love

She baked you a cake on this illicit day.

23, 24, begin again at 22

Don’t allow the numbers to rise

you wouldn’t want to be the last prize.

Every line must be filled

to the brim, soft plastic.

Save the toddler elastic.

Half a life, might as well die.

Lock me in a tower,

the tallest, darkest tower.

The prince cannot see me

before facial protocol.

Let the dragon burn me taut.

Break my ribs, how could I not fit in Dorothy’s basket.

I see a twister coming along the edge

give the wicked witch my sincerest

apologies. Bury my head in the sand.

There is no mister

who would date or confer

anything  older than a lamb.

Diamonds are a girls best friend, no.

They’re her worst enemy

the looking glass, what she cannot be.

Shiny. Pretty. Slender. New.

Shiny. Damages. Cracked. Pseudo.

So she paints herself thin

and takes scissors to her skin.

Cut off the strap

under her arms

around her hips, they must go

what doesn’t fit.

Hair, a blanket around her feet.

Nails, a white cast against her skin.

More red, she smiles blood

her eyes are sunken she calls it haute

You can eat her with no guilt.

Take a bit of her lips,

don’t mind the roughness

she tossed away her skin

replaced it with a hit.

She memorized the posters

the doctor prescribed

rip her thighs three sizes too short

a gnome to stick on a pretty green lawn

next to the head

of the mistress of Oz.

xx zjf

Orion By Mary Oliver

I love Orion, his fiery body, his ten stars,

xx zf