In native folklore the    sun chases the moon, brother, sister. My brother’s anger   

still makes me dizzy.

The clock is mad    and I’ve gone with it. Away with the fairies,     as the Irish say. So    I’ve created my little Gods with Monopoly top hats. Awayfrom patriarchal worship, DSM psychosis Not Otherwise Specified. Away from the family tree, away from the poisoned fruit. And we are back to the beginning.

The same story that has been told    since the start of stories. The fairies are sidhe who capture the minds and live in the Cave of the Cat    AKA Oweynagat. Kiss me I’m going home.

Sidhe also live in the wind, in this poem, they’ve come    to get me. To leave a changeling, look alike, imposter. It is you, isn’t it, you in my head, unnamable—a Macbeth    of ailments.

The fiberglass of    Irish dance shoes gets in my hands. The only who can’t be helped by psychoanalysis, oh Freud, oh Ford, oh God, which witch is which?

Kiss me I’m Irish, the T-shirt says. Give me something light and smooth like heaven. Guinness—breakfast leftovers in a blender. All roads to hell were paved with good intentions. An illusion like anonymity, Copyright and welfare crisis bursaries. Wearing Christmas cracker hats. Kiss me I’m not home.

Psychotic cats, symbols of the devil. I went to AA, was a tourist at funerals I never figured out how to dress for, my skirt, too short, I’ve been told, and I hide with serpents, waiting for the fairies    to take me. So we can tell the story of Alice and Eve and the Irish famine. And we can plant a new family tree.

All hail—this one is mine.

JILL TALBOT attended Simon Fraser University for psychology before pursing her passion for writing. Jill has appeared in Geist, Rattle, Poetry Is Dead, The Puritan, Matrix, subTerrain, The Tishman Review, and is forthcoming in PRISM and The Cardiff Review. Jill won the PRISM Grouse Grind Lit Prize and 3rd place for the Geist Short Long-Distance Contest. She was shortlisted for the Matrix Lit POP Award for fiction and the Malahat Far Horizons Award for poetry. Jill lives on Gabriola Island, BC.