Cover Art by Anne Milligan
“Goddesses never die. They slip in and out of the world’s cities, in and out of our dreams, century after century, answering to different names, dressed differently, perhaps even disguised, perhaps idle and unemployed, their official alters abandoned, their temples feared or simply forgotten.”
Phyllis Chesler - "Women And Madness" - quoted in "Manic Dawn."
She Wanders - Adapted from "Manic Dawn"
she wanders
addicted to moonlight
and wonder
following night
and the river
girl in white dress
flowers braided in her hair
blood stained tangled
baby in her arms
crooning lullabies
she sings
on the rainswept corner
her bags
full of rubies and frogs
a green fairy plays a flute
you might find her
sleeping beneath a yew hedge
wild hair braided with
her rosary of berries
she’s the keeper in the green
Baba Yaga head made by
Carole Johnston
“story time
at the witch’s house
ginger tea”
Manic Dawn, Carole Johnston’s recent collection of poems, carries the reader into a dangerous, crepuscular landscape between alternating realities that dip and dive like frenzied swallows. Her penchant for creating new language, like blueluminous, is but another way of engaging the attentive reader in poetic rhapsodies. Steeped in myth and remnants of Beat magic, her language calls the astounded soul to the cliff edge of reality. See how she flies!
— Normandi Ellis
Normandi Ellis author of Sorrowful Mysteries And Other Stories, Awakening Osiris, Dreams of Isis, Invoking The Scribes of Ancient Egypt, Imagining The World Into Existence, Fresh-Fleshed Sisters, Words On Water, and many others
Baglady Ballet by Carole Johnston
"she wraps herself
in her cloak of
black feathers"
- “and so she does. These are brave poems, overshadowed by the black wings of the crow and the heavy cloak of the witch. They are poems not afraid to look at the dark side. They sing a slow dirge, a funeral hymn, a sacred chant, and they call us to look inside our own deep selves, and see the dark and the light and the shadows of the secret life that dwells there.”
—Joy McCall
“MANIC DAWN reads like a modern day fairy tale, treading so delicately between the inner & outer, the real & magical... Carole's voice drips with myth, magic & the voice of the outsider. Anne Milligan's gorgeous art adds both beauty & pleasure to the journey o what a JOY it was to edit & publish this book! thanks for letting me be part of this important work.”
—Caroline Skanne