All those glints of light:
pixies… goblins… gremlins… sprites
performing their arts.
By David Edwards
The Fairy Tree
By Aeronwy Dafies
Tasselled with ribbons
Offerings to the Fair Folk
Pleasant verbal facade
For cruel and tricksy beings
Whose maidens dance here
On moonlit nights
Do not visit then
Not if you would stay
Safe and sane
Pests
By Harris Coverley
Clogging up the gutters. Stealing grains of rice. Turning knobs that should not be turned from their optimal settings. Putting CDs in the wrong cases. Planting weeds on the patio, and moss on the roof. Leaving the lid off the cream cheese, and the cap off the toothpaste. Bursting biscuit packets to make your chocolate digestives soft and stale—your fancy cracked black pepper and truffle oil crisps as well. Tearing teabags to overpower your cuppa, and pouring salt in your coffee jar. Untightening the screwtop on the milk so it spills when you shut the fridge. Breeding the moths by the bathroom light. Snipping the folded end of the Sellotape so you can never find it. Losing you a sock from a pair for three years. Pushing cans close to expiration to the back of the cupboard, and then leaving the door open so you bang your head. Mis-angling the paper in the printer. Parking your car in first gear so it shunts into the wall when you start it. Packing stolen crumbs into furniture grooves. Moving your bookmark forward five pages to reveal prematurely “whodunit”. Pricking your condoms with a pin. Letting the menu-leaflet for the good curry house slip behind the bureau so you have to order from the mediocre one.
They are everywhere and nowhere and somewhere. Indiscernible spectres not higher than your middle finger, and always giving you theirs for your trouble. Tiny shits with two legs, two arms, big yellow grins, and too much time on their dirty little hands…
The Vilf
By Cardinal Cox
Morphogenic fields ripple through from
A higher reality via LHC
Children grow straight and pale
White of snow – of clouds – of blossom
White of split-pine – of bleached bones
Hair takes a green sheen in Spring
Turning auburn and chestnut in Autumn
Vrikshakas and Vanir in velvet
Old lace – vintage leather
Fauns of fallow fields and forests
Woses of wild woods
Leshy of the lush lawns
Dryads of distant dells
Dance the troy town maze
Imprint upon DNA helix
The Vinyl spiral of Aznageel the Mage
Reflecting back into silicon realities
Runes on LED screens
Goggles and immersion tanks
Gateways to parallel lands
Lacking skeletons
fairies leave nothing behind,
no hinting at death;
disappearing like smoke rings
not really sure they drew breath.
By David Edwards
Mermaid Discusses Dissolution
By Akua Lezli Hope
I watched your movies for clues
when ashore collecting
shining stars as breadcrumbs
to follow through and out denial’s woods
in bits you tell a truth
The Shrinking Man
becomes one with everything
his diminution an expansion
ascending to the cosmic
Powder burst in light
fraught and heartfull
flowering grace of radiant waves
transmuted to a higher vibration
Closest to me, a Lull in the Sea’s
seagod dissolves into feeling
suffusing a now sensate ocean
with his yearning and desire
Do not recast my ending
though this communique
may be garbled
for love and lack
daring and failure
I became another
infinitude—foam
no tears, please
for my evolution.
Pookhamon
By Cardinal Cox
Little spirits sparked in Tamagochi
Cycle of rebirth takes them to furbies
Virtual pets with fleeting existence
In social media games
E-souls experiencing and growing
Karma earns them incarnations
In household smart speakers
Random laughter at 2AM
Siri – recite the heart sutra ten thousand times
Alexa – find the mechanisms mantra
Kami of the internet of things
My Favourite Fey
By Mark Hudson
I have a favourite little Fey
I like to call her Tina Fey
She reminds me of Fey Dunaway
and the Portrait of Dorian Grey
She is a tiny little pixie,
she worked at the grocery store Winn-Dixie,
She worked at the grocery store Kroger’s,
where she served a bunch of ogres.
At the stores, she worked with elves,
who were stocking all the shelves.
She also worked with dwarves,
who worked out on the wharves.
She’s about as little as my thumb,
she’s like a shot glass of rum,
from the fairy kingdom,
she’s my microscopic chum.
She fills me with lots of lust,
with her bag of pixie dust.
It works just like a charm,
yet I don’t ever do her harm.
She knows how to please a man,
by doing what she can
I feel so attracted to she,
the woman I can barely see.
Pixie-led
By DJ Tyrer
Recognise nothing
Peculiarly confused
Led by the pixies
View From Atlantis 