1. Carved from a fallen tree,
the walking stick
shatters a mace
2. Slice the monster’s head
and it regrows. Feed it
and it withers
3. Much to everyone’s astonishment,
the talking parrot reveals
it was magical all along
4. The God wolf brings down
its mountainous paw,
cleaving a skyscraper
5. After the eruption,
car-sized hornets returned
to their volcano nest,
carrying a woman and her child
6. An astronaut discovers
his guiding star
was an abandoned satellite
7. Having restored peace
to the hummingbird kingdom,
the bat with no shadow
flew back to the moon
8. Each day, the angel
on the tiny planet
resisted dreaming
of cliffside promises
9. An emotional robot
discovers fantastical beings
guarding a castle
inside the dying boy’s heart
10. Finding the never-ending avocado,
a former beggar fed his village
11. Prisoners danced feverishly
while the eye remained shut,
only to fall silent when it opened
12. After the last human died,
all together and all at once,
the birds of the world began to sing
13. At the end of the forest-wrought trail,
a smiling blind bear asks wanderers
what they’re afraid of
—to survive, say nothing at all
14. Having a touch that turned
anything into flowers,
the boy finally found peace
in his self-imposed garden
//
Christopher Morgan is a Lebanese American prose poet who grew up in Detroit, the Bible Belt of Georgia, and the San Francisco Bay Area, where he currently lives and co-manages Nostrovia! Press. The author of two chapbooks, “Shadow Songs” (Sad Spell Press 2015) and “Fables with Fangs” (Ghost City Press 2016), he’s also the Reviews Coordinator at Alien Mouth. He loves hiking in the redwoods, aphorisms, and happy hour margaritas.