From Sally Van Doren:

Can we get
along or can’t we?
Not when one man
sets his anger on fire
and it’s lights out
for everyone around him.

– After Every There 3

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From Allen Upward:

Like a breath from hoarded musk,
Like the golden fins that move
Where the tank’s green shadows part—
Living flames out of dusk—
Are the lightning throbs of love
In the passionate lover’s heart.

– The Gold Fish

From Shawn Pittard:

I killed a great silver fish,
cut him open with a long

thin knife. The river carried
his heart away. I took his

dead eyes home. His red flesh
sang to me on the fire I built

in my backyard. His taste
was the lost memory of my

wildness.

– The Silver Fish

From W.B. Yeats:

Although you hide in the ebb and flow
Of the pale tide when the moon has set,
The people of coming days will know
About the casting out of my net,
And how you have leaped times out of mind
Over the little silver cords

– The Fish

From Elizabeth Bishop:

I stared and stared
and victory filled up
the little rented boat,
from the pool of bilge
where oil had spread a rainbow
around the rusted engine
to the bailer rusted orange,
the sun-cracked thwarts,
the oarlocks on their strings,
the gunnels—until everything
was rainbow, rainbow, rainbow!
And I let the fish go.

– The Fish

From Kai Cheng Thom:

1) if you can name the beast / then you can tame it
2) if you know the curse’s shape / then you can break it
3) when you have found your heart / then you have found the witch

– the laws of magic*, from poetry is dead‘s coven issue

From Alessandra Naccarato:

I of old wood, hawk-mouthed,
unshuttable.

I as rude-one with knife up sleeve. Knife
as world cutter, as heirloom
disinheritor. Baba

as top femme. Baba as aged-moon
walking. Yaga, engti, inti:

I witch of undesired, ugly as first
breath, in endless butch

awakening. My many-gendered house
on chicken feet, laughing

in forest at dawn.

– Baba Yaga as Hard Femme, from the Poetry is Dead “Coven” issue