![\"\"](\"http:\/\/www.heroicfantasyquarterly.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/icicle-3.jpg\")
<\/a><\/p>\nI wait underneath the icicles<\/p>\n
encrusting the roof’s edge, catching<\/p>\n
droplets in an old goblet I found<\/p>\n
in the back of the cellar where a mouse<\/p>\n
made a nest, dragged in a length<\/p>\n
of pale green ribbon<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
As the icicles die, my hands<\/p>\n
shake, sloshing droplets back<\/p>\n
and forth, these goblets too delicate<\/p>\n
to risk even the nimblest,<\/p>\n
thinnest of gloves, a fact<\/p>\n
I’ve learned in frostbite and regret<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Maybe by tomorrow I will<\/p>\n
have collected enough to appease<\/p>\n
the maw of spring, given it liquid<\/p>\n
enough to agree to nourishing rain<\/p>\n
so this winter may eventually<\/p>\n
retract its claws<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
________________________________________<\/span><\/p>\n Devan Barlow is the author of the Curses & Curtains series of fairy tales-meet-musicals fantasy novels. Her short fiction and poetry have appeared in several anthologies and magazines. <\/em>She can be found at her website devanbarlow.com<\/a> or on Bluesky @devanbarlow.bsky.social. She reads voraciously, and can often be found hanging out with her dog, drinking tea, and thinking about sea monsters.<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n Simon Walpole has been drawing for as long as\u00a0he can remember and is fortunate to spend his freetime working as an illustrator.\u00a0He primarily use pencils, pens and markers and use a bit of digital for tweaking. As well as doing interior illustrations for various publishing formats\u00a0he has\u00a0also drawn a lot of maps for novels. his work can be found at his website\u00a0HandDrawnHeroes<\/a>.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" UNDER THE ICICLES, by Devan Barlow, artwork by Simon Walpole I wait underneath the icicles encrusting the roof’s edge, catching droplets in an old goblet I found in the back of the cellar where a mouse made a nest, dragged in a length of pale green ribbon As the icicles die, my hands […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[88,3,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4357","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-issue-63-archive","category-main","category-poetry"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.heroicfantasyquarterly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4357","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.heroicfantasyquarterly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.heroicfantasyquarterly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.heroicfantasyquarterly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.heroicfantasyquarterly.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4357"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.heroicfantasyquarterly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4357\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4385,"href":"https:\/\/www.heroicfantasyquarterly.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4357\/revisions\/4385"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.heroicfantasyquarterly.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4357"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.heroicfantasyquarterly.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4357"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.heroicfantasyquarterly.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4357"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}