January 25 -- Laura Madeline Wiseman

The Fairy Tree

The fairies have cried wolf, stood as the town crier to give the general cry, the far cry, within cry of him once standing there watching where he’d thought I’d gone. They’ve drank from the whiskey crier, cried over spilt milk, cried out their eyes, cried on my shoulder, cried all the way to the bank where they gave the cry of pleasure, crying forth in the moonlight, crying at last. In Iceland, they have The Screaming Tree, a place a man can holler, can scream down the sun, scream off the stars, scream back to who he was before hunger, economy, boss, or whatever had set him off. We don’t live in Iceland. We don’t live among fairies on this adventure, but the fairies live near The Crying Tree, a red leafless creature with swirling bark, growing deep among palms, yuccas, and thorns. In full cry of the blood moon, they give the great cry, the good cry. They are crying out for us.

After the painting “The Crying Tree” by Patssi Valdez.
First appeared in Abyss & Apex, 2016
From An Apparently Impossible Adventure (BlazeVOX Books, 2016)