Featured Poems From Mythic Delirium, Issue 16, Winter/Spring 2007 King’s Man After Alfred Noyes’ ‘The Highwayman’ Samantha Henderson

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You must understand I thought she was his whore, like the others I knew he had a dozen Besses Across the countryside, at a dozen inns A dozen sloe-eyed, black-tressed whores. We paid for the ale, in good gold coin And there was talk of sport with the wench, after, But we'd have paid her too, so thought it no harm. Whose idea it was, to bind the musket so, I can’t remember, The muzzle bit like a hard iron mouth, I laughed with the rest, until I saw her eyes Hard as black ice, and back to the window to keep my watch. I can't remember why I turned; I think I heard a sound The tap of a fingernail against the trigger, or the creak of a tight-bound shoulder joint, However it was, I turned and saw before I heard the shot: A haze of fine red droplets A torso torn in two One white breast hanging By a thin strip of skin. After three men puked their guts After we untied her and laid her on the bed After we wiped our hands on the curtains After her father saw I was happy to wait all night and morning and noon For a chance to kill him. As we fired, I thought too late to spare the horse Which screamed in the road until Dobbin put a bullet         through its skull A handsome bay with a black, black mane Coarse black hair, like hers. My beer is bitter in my throat My bread is ashes in my mouth A puff of red like dust on a dry road A horse screaming And one white breast.

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A Mythic Delirium Classic From Issue 3, Summer/Fall 2000 Reflections in a Fading Mir Ann K. Schwader

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Whatever we abandon gathers ghosts — Pale dust of our ambitions, hopes & fears, Fled out of fragile flesh to other hosts. Though doomed to suicide by thirteen years, This worn new world will not flame out alone. The shades of Dobrovolsky & Volkov, Of Pitsayev & V.M. Komarov, Fly with her now as they have always flown. Then one more shadow, smaller than the rest, Weaves joyously between their weightless feet & wags a welcome even in defeat To comrades all who shared this final test With her . . . & like her, perished as they passed . . . The faithful soul of Laika, home at last.

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* Dobrovolsky, Volkov, and Pitsayev were casualties of 1971’s Soyuz 11. V.M. Komarov died in 1967 during the reentry of Soyuz 1 — ten years after the dog Laika was launched (and died) with Sputnik 2. “King’s Man” first appeared in Mythic Delirium, Issue 16, Winter/Spring 2007. “King’s Man” copyright © 2007 by Samantha Henderson. Voice recording by Samantha Henderson, © 2007; all rights reserved. “Reflections in a Fading Mir” first appeared in Mythic Delirium, Issue 3, Summer/Fall 2000. “Reflections in a Fading Mir” copyright © 2000 by Ann K. Schwader. Voice recording by Dmitri Zagidulin, © 2007; all rights reserved. Illustrations courtesy of Wikipedia. These poems may not be reproduced in any form without the authors’ express written permission. Back to newest featured poems.