FestiFeatures

Cinderella's Shoes by Marxie Colliver

My bravery broadens
beyond waltzing broomsticks and field mice friends.
Still, my stepmother says to be careful, or the nick of time
might nick me first;
the slippers would crash under my weight,
glass blossoming, bloodthirsty flower
twinkling into my bloodstream,
I’d give the audience a ball,
though none of this matters
because the impossibility of my attendance strikes 
well before midnight; you couldn’t catch me
dead like a rat in a trap
in bouffant bloat parading the debutante ball,
batting eyes at an aristocratic Charming chump,
Nor could I submit myself
to time or a bippity bankruptcy or a hollow blue hologram 
gown, nor would I skimp on a kiss 
for fear of being found out. 
No one’s home in her mind palace;
Black sheep still follow family,
identity hides beyond the gates.
They’d find me barefoot, squashed into pumpkin guts
rolling… rolling… mush.

Charon can't be crude by Aileen Dosev

can he? he's got 
a full time job, that 

boat, two coins for 
every lost passenger, a scythe. 

do not blame his gloomy look.
how would you fare down under? 

Eclipsed by soil and crust, 
caked in the ground-breath 
and forgetting waters and wailing-- 

All that wailing. Tantalus' whine 
that echoes, since, y'know, 
it's a cave. 

Not quite sadness 
that lives here, only 
it's wallpaper. Bound to 
grow on you, though,

like lichen and mildew creep around 
the skiff's hull, his cape. 
Dreadful, really, have a damp uniform. 

Crawling wet, dampness is, that sits, 
never seeps, 

Shivers. and IMAGINE, dear, saying welcome 
to every new dead soul? People 
are used to niceties, but do not blame Charon 

for his scowl. Imagine an eternal shift. 
Can't even buy an ice cream 
with all those drachmas!

Cardboard Cinderella by Elizabeth Rozeboom

Cardboard Cinderella
a patchwork princess
made of scraps 

Cardboard bones
Wide eyes staring
Word clippings for skin 

Here she is immortalized
In her night of wild joy
Only magic can make one perfect, for a few hours, that is all

Quiet the breath
Breathed by the queen 
Cinderella, can you hear me? 

Her image forever
Symbolizes what?
That virtue is better than gold?
That fortune must be found? 

In the end she glows with her future 
fables don’t pass happily ever after
In this essence, so do we

Cinderella encased forever
In her night of wild joy 
Magic means perfection 
Tie a ticking time clock to this emblem of invention

When only joy is remembered
Only joy exists

Fool’s Bandit For Thought by Devin Hurd

Dawn walks on a mire
In a masquerade of white lotuses twined together in a dozen
Skeletons dance with skinless glee ones who smiles cling to the wall like a shadows to clay
Oh which to pick for this day?
A face whose orange hue reflects the boom of my soundless applause
Or perhaps eyes of a starset night speaking riddles in plastic tongues
All are an enticing meal to feed on for my ambivalent cast
Yet the show cannot go on, no sir
For there are souls to reap with my claw
Time to get rowing, I have a date with a mechanic
His shoes will be befitting for the rims of my new oak piped logs
But I’m afraid I have no shells to gift
The butterflies stole them you see, rolled up and up and up and away
Those clever bastards always had a horseshoe for a pike
My entourage on the other foot are as blind as a pack of pigeons in the Alps
Hell awaits one already might as well cash in his retirement
He owes my left second niece a pocket full of lint anyways
Oh how strange they all are, a band of misfits birthed from the recesses of delusionary
manuscripts
Even so as I watch my final election campaign with Michelle I cannot wait for my pants to run
With a flick of my finger and the tinge of my rat
I deem thee a fool
A masquerader for the sciences
You are a black hole for there is no light beyond your horizon
I can see the spheres of your orbits as they groan ever closer
There’s one, two, three, four more
For I bet, I gamble you see
I steal a wrathful tone from your lungs and plant it into the soil to grow
Yes rise rise my minion!
You are alive because as long as the delusion rains so does the bountiful gains harvest
Past the glaze of a donut in the bitterness of the dough of your skull
It is just ready to be burned with a sense of no sense
Just relax take a seat
I can bring in the milk and the water from your trunk
Just pop it open and be ready for the slump
There is no time, no way to dally
Thought is as precious as a pear tree
And I can only love those who have loved

Untitled by Owen Chen

His boat floats 
It flies 
It travels 

It doesn’t really matter how. 

No matter what, 
You know you’ll meet him. 

You understand this, 
You understand this is something you cannot avoid 
And yet, 
The sight of his scythe resting over his shoulder, 
His eyes devoid of feeling or emotion. 

And they stare back at you. 

And you feel nothing but the urge to stare back. 

You understand. 

You understand your place in his timeline, 
And it’s simply just time that you meet each other. 

You know how you got here, 
You wouldn’t be face to face if it wasn’t time for it. 

Unsure of what “it” is? 

Don’t worry. 

That’s not for you to decide.

Beware the Centaur by Kayla Lugo

Oh no! Look out
it’s a centaur!
It’s going to eat me.
My tiny human legs cannot outrun
the sheer speed of the centaur
as it has four horse legs.
As I continue to run away in fear
I hear something
Stop! the centaur yells
I don’t question why the centaur wants me to stop
because I know he just wants me to stop
so he can eat me.

As I frantically run faster,
so does he and
before I know it
he’s right behind me.
He flings me up in the air
with his neck.
Oh no
I’m now on the centaur!
As he widens his mouth
and shows me his razor-sharp teeth,
I silently beg for mercy
hoping that I don’t die.
But, in a shocking and confusing twist
the centaur asks me if I’m lost.
Puzzled, I told him yes
and then the centaur offers me a ride home
which oddly enough I was on board with.
As we arrived home
I apologized for assuming
he would eat me and
I asked the centaur how to thank him.
He said he was starving and
I told him to wait out here.
But he said the food is already here.
He opened his mouth and ate my head
before heading off to eat more people.
As I ascend into heaven,
I look down on my half-digested body,
and pray that if I am reincarnated one day
I hope to never trust a centaur
EVER AGAIN!

THE HOLY TIGER by Lily Banks

Rip me apart,                  tear me to shreds - 
I implore you.                  Have what you want - 
all of my organs              on display, 
free for taking,                 BUT DO NOT STEAL
MY BONES!                      without them 
I am nothing -                  I will fall apart &
my guts will spill             & no longer belong to me; 
I will not have                  the pleasure of
                giving them to you.

I beg you, harvest me,      wear my pelt, 
though it is in                     slivers and ribbons; 
drink my redness -             I promise i
t tastes like                         sweet honey.
My most vulnerable          spot may be 
picked over,                         but I want 
you to have                         everything that is 
                    left of me.

Hey Look, I’m a Star by Noah Chang

A Centa with no nosebleed
With no brown or gallops 
Only thing material 
Is my thigh is my smile 
Nurture the scalps of my eye 
I am a smile I am a midwest star 
I am a constellation, I am 
An escapee of the telescope panopticon 
Free, Attica! out of it is a forest of 
True sunlight, true fear of leopard marks on barks, true sleeping duty of a stageplayed I who
awaits Dante in the forest in case the black leopard gets tired of new readers, true enthusiasts 

Oh, one more thing, 
My white, dry skin painting 
The white salt desert into unlickable sea 
An erasure of records, but also a glue of it, 
I wonder whether the Spurs won the cup under my skin 
I wonder whether veins inked the psyche of wars 
Into blood stocks and Oscars, breaking walls, and paupers, an Oboe 
Platters of chemical newspaper smell 
Like blood money, layers if hands 
Creating stinging uproars of a monumental disgust springing from just fingers, from spitted
mouths, from guillotine of tongues, from bloodless arms

Paper Tiger by Miranda Tess

A creature built for war,
With sharp claws and shaper teeth
Now lain to rest inside the menagerie

What remains of this great beast is tattered
Once sharp claws now dulled by silence
Once sharp teeth filed and broken for the safety of those below
Eyes forever stuck, staring at the ground
Unable to move
Unable to plead

Once a proud creature, now brought to its knees by the gentle silence of peacetimes.

When it is needed again,
(If it ever is)
It will patch its claws and its teeth
Open its eyes
Stretch its paper mache arms
And regain its fiery spirit.

But for now it allows itself to be comforted by the silence
Waiting for the day that it needs to draw its claws once more.

Humpty Dumpty got chased by a wall by Kelsey Walworth

Scary looking he is, this Humpty,
cream colored egg leaching golden yolk from beneath bandages, Humpty Dumpty
looks at me angrily as he is sat
on the asphalt, both of us waiting on
the drummers, with their tin cans and orange Home-Depot buckets, to start up a
raucous beat to which we will march, me and the artist and Humpty and the wall. 

(I still don't quite understand what Humpty
did to earn the pursuit of such an angry wall, poor Humpty Dumpty
is the one who got hurt after all, perhaps the wall simply had
a grievance to settle about Humpty choosing it as a
sitting place.) It’s a handsome wall save its great
spiky teeth and silver eyes, I hoist it into the air and brace against the wind so I won’t fall 

as the color and motion are starting up all
around us and we take to the streets, the
children recognize the mermaid and the princess in ice blue right away, those fantasy king's
common subjects, it's easy to tell centaurs from horses
but not so for telling eggs with grumpy, bunched up faces from moons or volleyballs and
they frown at Humpty with his brick wall in hot pursuit, all
up and down main street until suddenly the
artist, creator, egg-puppet master, says why let the king’s
other subjects have all the fun? Humpty becomes alive then, in the face of startled men,
he is shaking hands, bending for the ones he can’t
reach like the children that all are seized with an urge to put
their small hands around the hollow, gloved ones of Humpty.
In the excitement Humpty loses one limb, then the other three, someone gathers them together
and carries them beneath him up and down the street, again and again and again. 

Gilded Paper Skin by Audrey Whitton

Cardboard skeletons 
Blunt tipped wings 
Fringe and glitter and flair
Discarded stories paper mache into skin 
Paper skin is gilded 
Stronger than it should be 
Glue like cement 
Anchoring these bodies to earth 
How many hands were sticky with glue 
How many hands trimmed and pasted and painted 
And collaborated 
To bring these puppets to life? 

Some have teeth 
Others wings 
Tails 
And hair 
Arms and paws 
And claws 
From a sketch to a frame to paper to paint 
Paper is normally flat 

This paper has been brought to you by Festifools 
Please hold for dramatic displays of motion

Their grins are eerie
Teeth pointed 
Mouths flat to painted faces 
Obituary turned armpit 

Ads and public notices and stories of violence 
Covered by glitter 
Hidden 
But not diminished 
They served their purpose
And now live a new one 

Hours and hours spent in a studio 
Where faces stare down from the ceiling 
And the walls have a thousand eyes 
A hundred hands 
And light floods the room 

Such a mismatch of fable and life 
Politicians share space with cartoons 
And Unidentifiable creatures with wings 
There is a peace in their coexistence 
If Cinderella is made of the same stuff as an alien 
Then maybe we’re not so different. 

Bride in-a-Box by Jalen Steudle

If you call within the next 15 minutes we’re offering an unheard of 50% discount on our world famous Bride in-a-box 

Do you have trouble with women? 

Then you’ll really like this you sick fuck. 

Buy love. Buy Connection. 

The juxtapositional forces are afoot. 

Love and money? 

No 

Love makes you want to live under a bridge together.

It snaps your heartstrings with each goodbye, but you still celebrate like a victory in battle.

Not quite the neat and tidied contents of a cardboard box. 

No bubble wrap can dull the sharp corners of a lover’s heart. 

“A lover’s eye will gaze an eagle blind 
A lover’s ear will hear the lowest sound 

Fleeter than arrows, bullets, wind, thought. 
Swifter things” 

Than the USPS.

Who Owns The Strings Though? by Brendan Johnson

There is a certain stoicism in a puppet. 

A couple of hands banding together to tug on tethers
made to meticulously measure out the movement of its body. 

I know Pinnochio grew restless below those poles.
Don’t lie, you know he sought control over his own limbs.
To be an antonym to the mind and its whims.
To be brimming with a desire akin to fire.
An urge to burn through the film of expectation.
The elation of independence existing in a fog.
Look up and see the strings swinging above the sting of his eyes. 

I wonder if a puppet takes pride in telling a story.
If it aligns with the minds of the puppeteers
who jeer in their drunkenness.
Intoxicated by the taste of change on their fingertips. 

Does restlessness turn to resolve?
Does the laughter of the children solve
the mystery of being mastered?
Could paper and plaster produce absolute peace? 

Tis’ a feat to bear the brunt of being your example.
To regard a painted on smile as part of your face.
To settle into a state of mind centered around your entertainment. 

The least you can do is clap when the show is over.

Once in a FoolMoon by Sydney Wagstaff

Shells standing idle with buried souls. How to uncover them?
Slapping on layer after layer after layer after 
paint only covers what’s commercial.
The death of a politician now stomach, 
score of last night’s game his ribs. 

Who creates life creates innocence– 
It’s not on the inside that counts– 

Tiger has been here long enough to know 
the names and faces of artists
who will disappear in a week. He remembers 
becoming one and their minds could be read. 

Blood thickens to entrails, 
Fabric frays at the edges. 

Stars are not slathered in glue,
don’t look like hotdogs when you squint,
but if you try to tell Tiger that he is not a star, 
he will laugh at you. 

The whole room will laugh at you 
because you’re too blind to believe 
that a Tiger could be a star,
and a star could dance down your street.