Two Poems by Linda M. Crate

inhuman

3/4 of you was a haiku
the remaining 1/4
was distance
and silence
ruminating for more than 1/2
of our relationship,
and the despondence of my heart
was so easily magnified
by only 1/18th of your insincerity and treachery
you were a man of 1,000 faces;
none of them knowing the name of love
1000 histories
zero of them representing anything
of humanity
which leads me to believe that your essence
is wholly inhuman
you were dead before you were begun
living only mechanically to please
the 1/8th of your that actually
remembers how to breathe.




card game

riddle me this, riddle me that:
tell me why are you the mad hatter
if you have no interest in alice?
you should just let me take the role
because i am 3/4 absurd,
and i could drink the tea and dance with
the rabbit better than you could;
you're simply logic and reason without a dram
of imagination
it's why you can't go from point a to point b
without being anything less than predictable,
but i fall down rabbit holes
walk through labyrinths throw logic and caution to the wind--
i step out of sync
because i don't want what the world has
i am simply content in being me,
and i think that hat would look better on my head so why don't
you paint the roses red?
i'll flip the deck,
and burn all the wicked cards soon enough
so you may as well live before you're
clubbed by your own cruelty
king of clubs.




Linda M. Crate is a Pennsylvanian native born in Pittsburgh yet raised in the rural town of Conneautville.  Her poetry, short stories, articles, and reviews have been published in a myriad of magazines both online and in print.  Recently her two chapbooks A Mermaid Crashing Into Dawn (Fowlpox Press -- June 2013) and Less Than A Man (The Camel Saloon -- January 2014) were published.  Her fantasy novel Blood & Magic was published in March 2015.  Her novel Dragons & Magic is forthcoming through Ravenswood Publishing.