Featured Poems From Mythic Delirium, Issue 18, Winter/Spring 2008 Awaré for the Woman who Disappears in Silence Jeannine Hall Gailey

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Based on “The Bush-Warbler’s Home” and other stories The man will chop wood for a living, yet still get lost in the forest. The woman appears, surprises him. (You will know her by the flame in the peony lantern, the slim trunk of the green willows. Her hair falls down her back like water.) Her splendid castle amid the trees he has never seen before. She is beautiful. He bows down. She asks him to watch the castle, to sweep the floor. Don’t touch anything, don't go exploring, she commands, and disappears. (She is not what she seems. She rules rivers, perhaps, or is truly a fox spirit. How can he know?) He sweeps, obedient for a time. He can’t stop himself wandering from room to room. There are many treasures. He thinks he sees three girls sweeping in a far room. They sing songs that sound like wind through the pines. He touches things. A nest with three eggs. He drops them and hears a sorrowful cry, when three small birds fly out a window. The rush of them like spring. The woman returns, crying, how could you lose me my daughters, no one is less trustworthy than a human! Before his eyes she becomes a bush-warbler, bringer of spring, and flies away. For a hundred years he stays, waiting, in the castle, though it remains empty. He touches nothing. In his dreams he marries her, their three daughters sweep obediently. He feeds birds with hope. According to Hayao Kawai in The Japanese Psyche: Major Motifs in the Fairy Tales of Japan, “awaré” means “softly despairing sorrow.”

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A Mythic Delirium Classic From Mythic Delirium One, 1998 Co-Authoring the Delirium Charlee Jacob

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and after she lit the flame and undid the strings which held her milky breasts together, and after she had opened the window where my love and hate crystallized in ginger, and after she painted my naked eyes with snowmelt from the alps of topmost shadows, and after she ground pepper out of stars for me to season winter’s flavorless lips with, then we moved together down the helltunnel of temples; then we stuffed the shocked windpipes of nightingales with our vows; then we occupied the dark, an army of obsessed suitors, and imprinted our bible... unholy manifesto of hawthorne wormwood revel and our turned-inward nightmares... on the unsuspecting dawn.

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“Awaré for the Woman who Disappears in Silence” and accompanying illustration first appeared in Mythic Delirium, Issue 18, Winter/Spring 2008. “Awaré for the Woman who Disappears in Silence” copyright © 2008 by Jeannine Hall Gailey. Illustration copyright © 2008 by Paula Friedlander. Voice recording by Jeannine Hall Gailey, © 2008; all rights reserved. “Co-Authoring the Delirium” first appeared in Mythic Delirium One, 1998. “Co-Authoring the Delirium” copyright © 1998 by Charlee Jacob. Illustration by Mike Allen, copyright © 2008. Voice recording by Jessica Paige Wick, © 2008; all rights reserved. These poems and illustrations may not be reproduced in any form without the authors’ and artists’ express written permission. Previous classic and featured poems by: Theodora Goss and Sonya Taaffe Samantha Henderson and Ann K. Schwader Catherynne M. Valente and Anna Tambour Back to newest featured poems.