Paul Ilechko
Snow Queen
As a child he loved the Snow
Queen with a passion that was alien
to his normal state of being
and now he digs through decades
worth of notebooks looking
for a clue why do his memories
embarrass him so much he thinks
as he turns out the bedside light
and turns towards the sleeping man
beside him in the large sleigh bed
still feeling the effect of the gin and tonic
that the two of them drank earlier
that evening and as he slides into sleep
a memory creeps out from somewhere
deep inside him of a barn stacked high
with hay and the children – teenagers
– sprawled across the stacks with
their sandwiches and sneering faces.
A Hard Bought Freedom
There were so many questions
but possibly even more answers
a rotation and a clicking into place
mechanical teeth finding each other
with an almost elegant simplicity
as the shadows of clouds would spin
across the horizon and the woman
had her teeth replaced with the whitest
porcelain that gleamed against
the blood of her gums and even
though we knew about her treachery
we pitied her anyway there are only
so many people you can hate in one
lifetime and we accepted the decision
to send her back to her family’s farm
with her shaved head and sliced
Achilles tendons and she lay
between the sheep and goats under
a trembling almost blue moon on
the first day of her astonishing freedom.
Paul Ilechko is a British American poet and occasional songwriter who lives with his partner in Lambertville, NJ. His work has appeared in many journals, including The Bennington Review, Bear Review, Atlanta Review, Permafrost, and Laurel Review. His book Fragmentation and Volta was published in 2025 by Gnashing Teeth Publishing. His newest book, Post Moby, will be released in June 2026 by Sheila-Na-Gig Press. He reads for Marrow Magazine.
