Back then
Mars brought dread:
human time,
dwindling,
us alone in
the vast.

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On Kubla Khan
By Deirdre Maultsaid

I dream about a barefoot woman with braided hair in a long sleeveless green nightgown standing in the dale in the sunshine, near willow trees, beckoning me to climb ancient marble stairs away from the lake, leave it, leave them, for, nearby, floating in the lily pads are dead bodies, faces caved in, skin mottled and in the ceaseless seething sloshing sunless water, at the marshy grass shore, they rise and sink again, while horror churns in my chest—beware!— and I jerk away but the woman near the willow doesn’t know about the terrible seething, so I follow her and when we arrive at a wide sunny verandah, I smell mint and lemon and pause at the set table where waits an avocado, halved and sacred, on an ornate white plate and I

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White overshadows white.

It is deep past zero
and hushed.

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Maultsaid, D. (2022). Pink Fur Purr. Impossible Archetype (11), March, 2022, pp.62-63

I was sorry for the mercy sex,
but humans hunt humans.

You wished to be a lady with a parasol: 
pure and ethereal. I was fiendish and real.

At 5, I had a cat doll with a wire hoop skirt
covered in faux black fur.

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Maultsaid, D. (2020, Oct.). Pajaritas. Riddle Fence, #37, Fall, 2020

By Deirdre Maultsaid 

I invite you to admire the crimson-tailed Saraya for it is the most lesbiana of all the birds. We have plenty to admire here.  Female pairs will live together in nests of moss, spit, and tinsel. They feed each other blackberries. Or, to tease: holly berries. If you wait quietly, you can see them perch close together on a thin branch and sing five low Continue reading →

Maultsaid, D. (2020). Double-cross. untethered, #52.1 Autumn, 2020. p.41

By Deirdre Maultsaid 

I trudged through the hospital and out the bellowing emergency doors and then I fell into the cold hoar-frosted numbing late city night and left my mother where she was not yet sleeping in the hollow clanging, under the blocks Continue reading →

Maultsaid, D. (2020, Oct.) Wreck Everything. Riddle Fence, #37, Fall, 2020

By Deirdre Maultsaid

The cat scrabbled on the shelf, gave one
choked howl, and landed upright

on the couch back. I watched the cat.
The cat watched my mother. The round black

vase tipped, it toppled, it fell. Shards
clattered and rocked. The surface of

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