Poetry
Where They Hanged the Witch Named Maeve
Where They Hanged the Witch Named Maeve
Stephen Thorn
They say the thunder rumbled low
Like a soft, foreboding drum
And the sky was colored like watered-down wine
Warning of something to come
According to the stories they tried her here
Away from the houses of town
And a wagon with two shaggy horses stood by
For when they brought her body down
Carrion birds came to witness the trial
All eager for their meager share
As the witch hunter used a dull razor and shears
To cut off her long, curly hair
They say that he searched her scalp for an hour
But no mark of the devil was found
So they stripped her and pricked her with dagger and awl
Before the greedy eyes of the town
And they say that after all these years
Still no grass grows on her grave
And no birds will perch in the barren tree
Where they hanged the witch named Maeve
They say her accuser was a man of wealth
High-placed in the town's social scale
He said that her witchery withered his wheat
And made his cow's milk go bad in the pail
He accused her of flying to his house on a broom
To invade his dreams at night
That she came to him naked and filled him with lust
And left him weak by morning's light
He said that she poisoned the land with her sin
And had meetings with the Lord of the Flies
And they say that she sobbed and begged them to listen
And that all of the charges were lies
But no man there denied her beauty was such
As to lead even good men astray
And several agreed she'd invaded their dreams
At least that's what the legend says
And they say that after all these years
Still no grass grows on her grave
And no birds will perch in the barren tree
Where they hanged the witch named Maeve
They say the judge ordered she face the test
So her arms and legs were tied
They took her out where the stream was known to be deep
And threw her over the side
For long, tense seconds they waited and watched
Then came the proof up at last
As Maeve, forevermore branded a witch,
Bobbed up to the surface and gasped
The good people of town wasted no time
They dragged her out to a sturdy tree
And as she begged and she pleaded and she prayed for her life
They wrapped a noose and let it swing free
Then they put it around her slender throat
Like the closing act of a play
They sat her upon a horse's back...
Then pulled the horse away
And they say that after all these years
Still no grass grows on her grave
And no birds will perch in the barren tree
Where they hanged the witch named Maeve
They say that her body writhed and shook
For several minutes, hanging up there
While the minister prayed and the good people stared
She danced on nothing but air
They say they took her body down
To a place where two roads meet
And they buried her face-down with the Host in her mouth
And iron spikes pierced through her feet
Yes, it's all in the records. You can read them today
But they're not easy to find when you look
They're kept in a box in a back room, almost hid
As if someone were afraid of that book
But there's no one to question, no descendants to ask
Just one book with pages still white
Because three days later everyone in that town
Simply vanished overnight
And they say that after all these years
Still no grass grows on her grave
And no birds will perch in the barren tree
Where they hanged the witch named Maeve
Stephen Thorn’s enjoyment of horror fiction grew from the many scary comic books and horror movies of his youth. Most of his work is in horror fiction, but he also writes fantasy, sci-fi, humor, romance, poetry, and erotica. He lives near Harrisburg, PA.
When Carmilla Returns, Styria Is Different
When Carmilla Returns, Styria Is Different
LindaAnn LoSchiavo
Covid reminded her of the Black Death,
Fatalities unfolding silently
As muslin shrouds, infecting secretly.
She’s deprived of uninterrupted sleep.
Roused from bleak dreams, Carmilla senses filth
Inside her lungs – uncleanliness. What’s changed?
A pox has blanketed the air with rot,
Its toxic aftertaste. This complicates
Her scheme – thirst urgent as a last request.
Even in darkness, she recalled her curse:
Ceaseless pursuit of youthfulness whose price
Is stolen blood – warm red wealth that buys time.
Without it, she’s the color of waiting.
Disease changed Styria, its ticking stilled:
Tram stops disused, shop signs like tattered skin
Peeling away in grim unhealthy breeze.
Old beech trees loomed like ghostly chaperones.
A curtain flutters like a helpless moth –
Reveals a sleeping, pink-cheeked blonde. Alone.
A vampire knows the contract she has made
With hunger and the power of beauty,
Ruled by unfathomable appetites.
She hypnotizes, casting sly shadows
Shaped like her victim’s most unrealized
Desires, then enters – cloaked in this disguise.
Author's Note:
Le Fanu's Carmilla: The Vampire Who Changed Everything
What Inspired a Conventional Irishman to Create a Teenage Lesbian Temptress?
by LindaAnn LoSchiavo – on December 5, 2025;
Native New Yorker. Poet. Writer. Dramatist. In 2024 LindaAnn LoSchiavo had three poetry books published in 3 different countries; In November of 2025 both books “Cancer Courts My Mother” [Prolific Pulse Press, Nov. 7, 2025] and “Vampire Verses” [Twisted Dreams Press, Nov. 28, 2025] were released and both have won awards.
“A segment of my formal verse functions as dispatches from the Bar-do—that liminal space I escape to with my imaginative alter-egos and my gothic predilections.”
Latitudes & Longitudes
Latitudes & Longitudes: An Outtakes Poem
Shelli Rottschafer
Latitudes of home
hurry from the child I
and toward the adult me.
Both born of the same backward stroke.
This awakening,
urges said swaddled child
below a pocked moon darkness.
Backlighted.
There I saw,
her hands lost in silver.
Scythe’s sliver
details stem to blade.
Sun sashayed
in an unworldly sky
a color that deep-ended
to indigo.
My air bleeds
playing at rock bottom
enraptured depth
of deep-sea divers.
Latitudes & Longitudes: An Outtakes Poem is the inversion of an original poem I wrote titled “Eclipsed,” which is after Annie Dillard’s essay “Total Eclipse” in The Abundance: Narrative Essays Old and New. NY: Harper Collins, 2016. Pp 1-24. The concept of an out-takes-poem is gleaned by Maya Jewell Zeller’s collection of poetry, out takes / glove box. Milwaukee: New American Press, 2023. An out-takes-poem works through erasure in that it takes snippets out of one poem in order to create an entirely different piece.
A precipice along Rockslide Trailhead, taken May 2025.
Photo Credit: Daniel Combs www.danielcombsphotography.com
The area is part of El Rio Grande del Norte National Monument which is threatened to being opened and exploited by Secretary Doug Burgum. Burgum’s Department of Interior plans to open Public Lands for natural resource extraction. This poem was written in protest, #HandsOff #PublicLands
The News of the Day
Shelli Rottschafer
As we take stock,
hearts plummet.
News headlined,
trickles down.
Public lands,
no longer may these feet tread.
Cuchillo cuts
a heavy price -
pined for hope
extracted.
Left to waste
rot in these dry climes.
Only desert monsoon will break
upon these flooded gates.
Extra
red reeds
our acequia, a newly eroded river edge.
El Río Pueblo whispers rapidly.
Sage-knowledge
ripe, for the fracking.
The news of the day:
We are still here.
The News of the Day was written April 10, 2025. Inspired while hiking Rock Slide Trail and where it meets Picuris Trail. This gravel route once was the road south of Taos that led over to the west-mesa. At the bottom of the canyon someone has repeatedly dumped trash like old appliances. Also, one of these discarded items is an old newspaper metal dispenser. Hence, the journalistic references. It was also written in anticipation of Earth Day, and our need for community clean-ups.
Shelli Rottschafer completed her doctorate from the University of New Mexico, Albuquerque (2005) in Latin American Contemporary Literature. From 2006 until 2023 Rottschafer taught at a small liberal arts college in Grand Rapids, Michigan as a Professor of Spanish. She also holds an MFA in Creative Writing with a concentration in Poetry and coursework in Nature Writing from Western Colorado University (2025).
Shelli’s home state is Michigan, yet her wanderlust turns her gaze toward her new querencia within the Mountain West where she lives, loves, and writes in Louisville, Colorado and El Prado, Nuevo México with her partner, photographer Daniel Combs and their Pyrenees-Border Collie Rescue.
Discover more of Shelli’s work at: www.shellirottschaferauthor.com
Moirai Contrapuntal
Moirai Contrapuntal
—for Nancy Beauregard
Erica Reid
| Clotho | Lachesis | Atropos |
| who knows? | ||
| will | all things | |
| start over | ||
| threads | end | |
some how | make art | no matter |
| fate is in | how we | |
| begin moving | their hands | |
| guide them |
Erica Reid is the author of Ghost Man on Second, winner of the Donald Justice Poetry Prize (Autumn House Press, 2024). Erica’s poems appear in Rattle, Cherry Tree, Colorado Review, and more. She teaches Poetry in Western Colorado University’s MFA program, where she was also a student. ericareidpoet.com
What We Talk About When We Talk About Teaching
Rebecca Salomonsson
There is a language we speak when we talk about teaching.
Standards, Flipped Classrooms, Metacognition,
MAP Scores, Growth Mindset, Differentiation,
Learning Targets, Success Criteria, Arts Integration.
That’s what we talk about when we talk about teaching.
So here’s a lesson for the unaware,
A few definitions to help you understand,
All the language, and all the knowledge, we bear.
We talk about classroom management
And consider how to manage when there is
One whose mom kicked her out;
One who struggles with his identity.
One who is not okay and we don’t know why
One who needs a snack because his stomach is empty;
One who doesn’t think she’ll live to see twenty.
Classroom management is seeing the whole
and the individual at once
We talk about Executive Functioning
And wonder how to teach them to
Organize a binder when there is
One whose dad is in jail (or should be)
One whose anxiety kept her up all night
One who cries in the back
Because someone told him he’s a failure
We wonder how to function when
Our own child cried herself to sleep last night
But we still have to teach a lesson on proper document formatting
Double-Spaced, Time New Roman, 12-Point Font
But we know how to do it and do it well because
Executive Functioning is learning to carry on
when so much is pulling us back
We talk about Differentiation
About how different our students are,
their strengths, their struggles
The one whose way of greeting us is, “Hi, favorite teacher!”
The one who’s not in our class anymore,
but always does a drive-by hug in the hall
We talk about the difference
between the emails we send and the emails we want to send,
But never will because we are professionals.
Differentiation is knowing our limitations
and the things we don’t let limit us
We talk about scope and sequence
But we can’t possibly prepare for the scope
of what the year will bring
or the sequence of events that might disrupt our day
For when the one we try to reach slams the door of her heart against us
Or how it will hurt when the one who seeks our guidance all year
Forgets to say goodbye on his last day.
And here’s the last lesson for those who don’t know,
those who sit in their corner of social media and
say we have an agenda of indoctrination,
Or tell us to stop complaining, get back to work, or quit if we’re unhappy,
And how dare we stand on that picket line anyway?
When we talk about teaching we talk about the sleepy eyes
That catch the fire of understanding
We talk about the one who says
“I like Shakespeare now because of you”
We talk about the one who used to be too shy to talk in class,
But who just auditioned for the play
The one who used to be too angry to look us in the eye,
But who now is the one who tells us everything
The one who says we’re the only adult they can talk to
The one who takes pride in his latest reading scores
The ones who keep us coming back to this place,
Who hold us in this profession and in this life,
A life that frustrates and exhausts and exhilarates
We talk about the books we’ll write someday,
the stories we’re collecting, the things we sometimes have to say
“Please don’t lick your desk”
“Maybe don’t glue your fingers together.”
They, these students, this life –
That’s what we talk about when we talk about teaching.
Rebecca Salomonsson is a writer and educator who lives in Connecticut. She has an MA in Genre Fiction from Western Colorado University.
Sowing // Stirring
Mackenzie Sains
Somewhere, not far from where you are now, there is a stirring. A child is born, the dawn breaks open, a flag is flown, a prayer commences, a pen creates a world. Somewhere, sleeping inside the seeds of your heart, there is a voice whispering of the world in which you have come from. Maybe, once, you’ve heard this story before. Maybe, soon, you’ll feel the ghost of it as you pass by a sturdy tree one evening with your dog. Maybe, you’ll notice how the light shines up from under the petals creamy white like fresh milk, how the branches are perfectly suspended over the sidewalk, how strong and generous this tree has been—here—and somehow, you’ve only just now noticed. Maybe you’ll reach out a hand and in your reaching out, you’ll feel that tree reach back out towards you. In a world surrounded by the dying, the disenfranchised, and the dispossessed, it will be the living that glows like a torch flame in the dark illuminating the path forward. It’s a story as ancient as Life.
Mackenzie Sains is a poet, writer, and dreamer living in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Western North Carolina where she loves to farm and camp. She received her MFA in Poetry from Western Colorado University in July 2025.
Latest Posts
-
Where They Hanged the Witch Named Maeve Stephen Thorn They say the thunder rumbled low Like a soft, foreboding drum And the sky was colored like watered-down wine Warning of something to come According to the stories they tried her here Away from the houses of town And a wagon with two shaggy horses stood…
-
Moon Pie Mondays Liz Adair Every Monday, he took half a watermelon, one grilled T-bone, and an unwrapped moon pie to the dead man’s land between wood and yard, where the green sod grass gave way to brown loblolly needles under the shadow of the pines. It was Jack’s job to leave the offering. He’d…
-
Attributed to the Snakes: An Eco-Memoir Shelli Rottschafer 2025 is the Chinese Year of the Wood Snake. It is meant to be a time of transformation, wisdom, and personal growth with the snake symbolizing intelligence, mystery, and renewal. In Chinese culture, the snake holds a high place, often associated with healing and rebirth due to…
Morrow Point 