Patrick McManaman

Pluto and Jupiter are coming together
to tell me to watch rolling gems;

centaurs have a way with horns:
they pluck them from their heads

like piscivores growing like flowers
on a mountain, lay them to their lips

and find air to carry a lazy whistle into space.

This is exactly what planet
readers say to fire:

tongues don’t grow out of amethysts
on a unicorn’s pike – it’s a close waltz –

I can read through scores of candy-
packed metaphors,

yet on a day when in need of wisdom,
Neptune sends a plumber to warn

of floods, right when my mouth
must not lo(o)se its water.

Originally published in Mytho Anthology (Poets, Artists Unplugged) by Authorspress India

Sheikha A. is from Pakistan and United Arab Emirates. She likes to refer to herself as a squirrel perpetually caught at crossroads. With no vivid memory of her ancestral home except for the large corridors and rooms that echoed of ghosts, she only remembers of her life growing up in UAE. She still believes herself to be haunted but has, now, found a portal of release through poetry that has helped erect safe boundaries from feeling a sense of homelessness from not knowing where she belongs. Recent publications have been Strange Horizons, Pedestal Magazine, Atlantean Publishing, Alban Lake Publishing, and elsewhere. Her poetry has been translated into Spanish, Greek, Arabic and Persian. She has also appeared in Epiphanies and Late Realizations of Love anthology that has been nominated for a Pulitzer. Her published works can be found at sheikha82.wordpress.com.