Fiction

There are witches who live-
In the woods
Also crossing busy streets,
They weave their way
Between city and field-
Both good and bad

Like that one on the black bridge,
Our grandmothers and aunties warned us,
She sucks blood and eats young children
Grabbing girls with jagged claws
Nailing boys with curved toes
Pulling them to her maw

,
She hobbles behind her façade
A sultry smile, glossy tresses,
Bouncing cleavage exposed;
Young husbands with a wandering eye
Stray from wives and babes

There are witches who live-
Amidst wise old trees and river goddesses,
Did you know that water is alive?
Hardly a surprise to hear this warning bubble:
Our Mother, Earth, is dwindling
She’s hot, this green woman,
Goddess done under, river run dry,
Fat with gases, done in
By grown up children,
The ones witches fatten up and raise
The one’s they don’t eat
The ones sent to kill a world
Filled with too much everything

There are trolls here on this land
(Given its own name, a forced nation),
Filled with too much
National difference

The trolls slip in and out unseen
On the lines of a world wide web
Hunting for children
To fish from international waters
Catch them in a net;
Unlike witches they play with their food,
Grass fed, all natural, organic, canned, modified,
Label’s mean nothing to them,
It’s all food to play with,
Tender children slowly eaten

A heroine rises
Surging from her father’s head (she gives him a headache),
Bow and arrow in hand
She’s a huntress, also, did you know
Artemis lives, Athena too?

She stalks trolls, tramples gnolls under hills,
Witches help her – the good ones –
Rescue children
Behead the bad ones
-sometimes they work together to defeat a mutual enemy-
Slay the demons who despoil their Mother,
Growing in numbers,
Growing strong
Growing together

But don’t worry,
The woods are just a place where trees live
Witches are bound to pages within children’s books
Demons are confined in nine hells
The earth is made up of dolomite rock and limestone shale
And this, this is only fiction,
The fiction of our times.