Featured Poem • June 2014

Unmasking
Sandi Leibowitz
Never say you minded Never say you didn’t guess it was my quickening inside her that made verses fly from her lips like frosty breath up to the winter stars Do not lie that you preferred the pale girl hiding behind night-black hair too shy to ask for kisses to sly me who never asked just took them Foxes are thieves by nature; I can’t be blamed for stealing your heart Never say that under the gleaming egg of the full moon you did not spy my true self, glimpse eyes of golden smoke, fur red as sunset nuzzling autumn maples, hear the snap of fine sharp teeth each time I nipped your nape in play Unmask yourself as well, my three-season husband, and confess: you’d readily exchange my snarls for her most precious compliments, my barks of joy for her submissive mews, would sooner chase me through sweet-scented grass than catch her in your kitchen Kitsune are not keen on winter leavings We crave love fresh, still squirming like a live hen in the jaws With the flick of nine snow-tipped tails I leave you I will not say that I’ll forget you

Sandi Leibowitz, a New Yorker by birth and choice, wears many masks and many hats (one is kangaroo and one is zebra), including musician, school librarian and author of speculative fiction and poetry. Her works appear in magazines such as Goblin Fruit, Strange Horizons, Stone Telling, Apex and Luna Station Quarterly. She has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and a Best of the Net Award. She has a story published in Metastasis, an anthology of speculative fiction and poetry about cancer, edited by Rhonda Parrish, and one of her poems was chosen by Ellen Datlow for inclusion in Best Horror of the Year 5.
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