Seal Wives and Fae Women: A Parable of Lost Girls

John Bauer, The Princess and the Trolls, public domain image

I wrote this poem back in January, which feels like a thousand years ago now. I held off posting it because I know how hard a year it’s been for doctors and how many of them have also succumb to an illness not yet understood, abandoned and devalued like so many of us chronically ill folks were long before Covid-19. But, given the attitudes towards disabled and chronically ill people in the US and the UK especially (“Just stay home!” or “Hurry up and die and decrease the surplus population!”), the people in retirement homes and other institutions left to die, the all too familiar plight of those with “Long Haul Covid”, and the continual dismissal of disabled and chronically ill voices in a time when we have real wisdom to offer–be it about finding yourself to still be ill when doctors can’t explain it or won’t believe it, coping with a reality that isn’t any less real just because we don’t want it to be or find it too hard to bear, or making due in isolation without adequate support systems–make this poem’s message all the more necessary. It’s my story and millions of others’; now, last year, and a thousand years before me. But I sincerely hope not a thousand years hence.

A Poem for Today, Yesterday, and Tomorrow

I wrote this one year ago today on Armistice Day. It’s been gathering metaphorical dust in the computer since, as my focus has been more on my health, other personal matters, and our current dystopia this year than poetry submissions. Thus, I decided I might as well share it here for you fine folks and what better day than today? I didn’t set out to write this poem. It just kind of tumbled out, likely after listening to “The Green Fields of France”, “Christmas in the Trenches”, and “Zombie” one too many times. (If you haven’t heard the modernized version of “Zombie” for the 21st century, go listen to it now.)

Entering the Dark Half of the Year in Dark and Difficult Times

[A candle in a teal lantern on the windowsill burns against the darkness and backlights the silhouette of a small pumpkin as two dala horses cast shadows]

I don’t have the words tonight, with so much death, hate, and sorrow weighing on the world, but, especially in such a dark time, I want to honor and acknowledge those beyond the veil, be they at peace, searching for something before they can move on, or hungry for justice and a reckoning for the wrongs history has yet to right or is all too eager to commit again.

Samhain: Summer’s End

Hope you all had a great Halloween, whether you partied, passed out candy, binged Stranger Things, went to a haunted house or a ghost tour, marched in a Halloween parade, danced in the grove, or spent a quiet night at home. And who says the fun has to be over? You can curl up with a spine-tingling tale of the ghostly and the Gothic long after all the candy has been eaten and the zombie make-up has been washed away. Halloween may be over, but the dark half of the year is here to stay and it brings with it no shortage of superstitions or the supernatural.

In-Betweens, Thin Veils, and a Ghost Story or Two

The infirmary at Canterbury Shaker Village, Canterbury NH, photo by Shannon Barnsley, October 2012.

“It was Gate Night, the night before All Hallows’ Eve. Distant memories of the old stories nagged at me. During All Hallows’ Eve the veil between the world of the living and the word beyond was lifted. Our world and their world all blurred together like ink running on a page in my old primer when we schoolgirls would try to run home in the rain, shrieking and splashing up mud all the way.”

– Shannon Barnsley, Beneath Blair Mountain

Gate Night: The Veil Grows Thin

The fairies be out that night and they would take you away with them if you were out at that evil time. It is also said that the devil shakes his budges [fur] on the haws and turns them black and according to the old people if you eat a haw after Hallow Eve night you will have no luck (qtd in “Halloween in Irish Folklore”).

Submitted for the Approval of the Midnight Society

It’s that time of year again. There’s a chill in the air, a draft in the house, and needles prickling at the back of your neck. So curl up with a good ghost story.

Persephone, Lara Rae, and Other Lost Girls of the Underworld

Much like Persephone from Greek mythology, Lara Rae Brecken, the main character of Beneath Blair Mountain, finds herself trapped in the underworld after wandering through a crack between worlds one cold October night. Irish mythology was at the forefront when I wrote this tale, but I consciously had Persephone and other analogous tales and figures in mind.

East of the Midnight Sun, West of the Full Moon

I am happy to announce that my horror story, “East of the Midnight Sun, West of the Full Moon” will be published in this year’s Wolf Warriors charity anthology. This year’s theme was light and shadow, so I had great fun playing with that imagery (and working in all manner of Easter eggs from vampire and werewolf lore and from Scandinavian fairy tale, “East of the Sun, West of the Moon”). Last year’s entry to the Wolf Warriors anthology was kid-friendly and upbeat, so I went darker and more overtly political this year. This is also the first year where I won’t have a single reference to “Little Red Riding Hood”. I suppose Red is finally passing the torch to a new fairy tale. 

Reckless Hate and a Keening for Heroes

I have been having a hard time processing the rising number of hate crimes in this country. Harder still processing the seeming silence of so many, both in my own life and on the political stage. Every time an Indian American man is killed I hug my half-Indian boyfriend tighter, wondering if he will be next. Every time I text him to get paper towels on his way home, I wonder if my simple request is what will get him killed. When he wears his Sith costume to DM a Star Wars game or wears a kurta to work, I wonder if that is what will get him mistaken for a terrorist by some idiot who cannot even properly identify the people he ignorantly hates.

But this recent act of terrorism in Portland, that claimed two lives and nearly claimed a third, has affected me more than I was prepared for. After two nearly sleepless nights and a fullblown anxiety attack while watching Harry Potter Weekend, I tried to process my feelings by putting them into words. Words, whether spoken, written, sung, keened, or carved in stone on a memorial are how we process these evils. How we remember who sacrificed and for what. Stories of heroes like Arthur, Aragorn, and Harry Potter are what we need when the world grows dark and uncertain and the right path grows more daunting or harder to find.

These fictional heroes are the best of us, our real flesh and blood heroes writ large across timeless stories that are still very much stories of their times. This is why I became a writer in the first place. So I hope you will take the time to read my words. I hope that they help in some small way as we, like Theoden, wonder what to do against such reckless hate.