AN AMBYS 2024 FAVORITE (POETRY) These my offerings, tiny and fragile, they must take root in stubborn soil. Fertilize them. Give them shape. Twisted they may grow, but their trunks must be strong. They must reach through the night. They must be of their ground... Note: this is as much an art portfolio as it is an anthology of my poetry. Every poem is illustrated. There is a regular section, and then a second section consisting of Instagram poetry posts that effectively make a "graphic novel" second edition of the first half of the book. Some of these poems were published in a chapbook, Eleusinian Mysteries, in 1995, under the pen name Sarah Maddox. Other publications that accepted my poetry include The Mill, Isis Magazine (the literary magazine for students at the University of Oxford), Tournaments Illuminated, and the late, great Shadowdance zine. All rights reserved; the moral rights of the author have been asserted; I do not provide consent for my writing to be used to train artificial intelligence.

Oozed out in blood, my words seep slowly onto drifts of white paper. What soil will I flood when springtime comes to dance? What flowers will feed from this dying pool? What poems will scream as they gasp their first cold air? Looking for more unearthed poetic arcana? Passion? It's here. This book is a sort of dark sister to Excavations. The poetry in it is old, like what I published in Excavations. It's a little edgier, a little more raw. Here is what lies underneath. As in Excavations, some of the poems have been previously published under the pen name Sarah Maddox. They are also available in the commercial edition of Excavations. I retain all the rights to my published poetry. Mildly explicit. Mature readers only.

Between rhyme and howl dangles a fragile world, a mundane egg of art: where words dance and display and are not prose because prose is not fit for frame or stage... My husband found some of my old poetry in a box in the back room when we were decluttering our house. He asked me if I wanted to save it. As it turned out, I did. I wrote these in September and October of 2003, shortly after I'd discovered I was pregnant with our second child. It is now my autumn. I am not young; I bear no fruit. But here is a memory of summer. My tree once blossomed. These poems have also been published in the commercial edition of Excavations.

The Dreamer awakes, the shadow goes by; the tale I have told you, that tale is a lie... Portals to magical worlds, goddesses that walk among us, corvids that speak the meaning of life, and more await the one who peruses this volume of collected tales. Reader, remember this: the tales are pure fictions. Fantasies. Except when they are not.

What happens when the healer of an oppressive, tiny village helps her younger brother learn magic, giving him a chance at living a decent life? Nothing good.

Through "The Gilden Door," a young girl grows up rapidly as she discovers she must save a land from ruin. Through the door into "Arkesh," two teens stumble and fall into a kingdom's civil war. Enter the dimensional portals to two magical worlds in this back-to-back collection of novelettes.

In Neihon, the Yokai are leaving. Slowly, one by one, they cross the waves toward the rising sun, walking, flying, and swimming toward a new land that only they can see. Yet some remain. They remain out of love, or out of obligation. The Minamoto clan has defeated the Taira clan, driving its warriors into the sea. The Hojo clan, mighty through its use of a captive Kinko kitsune, craves ever more power and will do anything to get it. Their kitsune only wants to be free.