Tag Archives: Forest

snow, blood, shit

better you don’t enter
the unreal forest
better don’t be tempted
with shrieking mavka’s ballads

stop & look around
the boat that carried you here
’tis a moored coffin
‘tween picturesque shores

the winter this year
is temperate
the spirits this winter
are hungry
the bodies cover the trails
the blood covers the bodies
as ai verisimilar
as your best nightmare

better you don’t enter
the unreal forest
better don’t be tempted
with shrieking mavka’s ballads

stop & look around
stop & look around
gaiman is watching you
he’s fucking watching

by TETIANA ALEKSINA
© All rights reserved 2025

balbal (the deflowered stone)

the dawning of solace
it feels like a pauper’s dream
adrift atween the peaks of myth
adrift atween

& baba yaga looks upon them
jawline set against the sky
cliché & lies brand her the monster
cliché & lies

lost to the claggy mountains
sundered kurgan & knelled tree
old memories traced to stone
& moss her fertile crown

fumbled by affrighted hands
her former name lays in ruin
cook & eat them bantling heads
cook & eat them

how did it all go to pieces
baba embraces the silent scream
she cannot be peculiar plain
she cannot be

lost to the claggy mountains
sundered kurgan & knelled tree
old memories traced to stone
& moss her fertile crown

by TONY SINGLE
© All rights reserved 2024

vista obscura

why are they vanishing?
to where are they going?
amid yews and larches
squeezing out wet moss
the foxes looking on
are wondering too
beady eyes and pointy noses
sniffing out of dense fog
following faintest trails
before they too disappear
and only a silver cobweb
left shivering on its twigs

by TETIANA ALEKSINA & TONY SINGLE
© All rights reserved 2023

the mute observer problem

if a deaf guy falls in the forest
& no one’s around to hear it
does he make a sound

probably

he just can’t hear himself
or maybe can’t use his words
like ouch or christ

by TONY SINGLE
© All rights reserved 2024

aokigahara

deadwood on a silent shore
the crack of daylight on her face
says maybe she won’t want to die
one day

ever unsure
unable to see tomorrow
yonder rot & spore
& chokehold of black trees

the war in her brain
can anything numb the pain
thunderclouds or amnesty
they say the forecast is up to she
dumbly she hangs ‘tween root & limb
awaiting the rain

ever unsure
the marrow’s in the morrow
this is what they say
but hope is a blithe man’s game

deadwood on a silent shore
she doesn’t know how to be
defiled she hangs lightly
for another day

by TONY SINGLE
© All rights reserved 2023