three poems

by Carol Shillibeer

Ovid and his tyrant

Sometimes you roll along

wine bottle in your left hand

trousers still looking like black

roses after a rain, and here

I am stone sober, mustard stain

just below the collar bone,

thrift store top—

who can tell which of us

is the better human. Oh sure,

you’re a couple of thousand

years old, and I’m on the losing

edge of 60, but you left your nation,

exiled—chanting Down Down Down

With Augustus, and here I am

pleading with someone,

anyone to kill that orange demon

so I can go home without regret.

I hope it doesn’t take another couple

of thousand years to come

to an understanding of the cost

tyrants take on history and the arts.

A day in the life of a very old fish-faced stalker

Glaucus in his blue dragon sea slug form

remains pretty, despite his now thousands

of years in the world’s pelagic zone.

He comes to the surface of course.

Turns into his human form, checks

to see if Scylla is nearby. One time

he found her in London, so he bought

a holiday home, not far from Dorchester

in the Roman zone. Dug up a bit of the garden

found an old mosaic, the stinging end

of his fishy form still bright, cheerful.

I feel comfortable there he said,

with a bashful wink of his bulbous

blue-green eyes.

There’s a fast train to Londinium.

I can track my love, find jellyfish

for dinner.

Ciris the Shearer is seen climbing her suite’s balcony railing at the Minos Palace Hotel then transforming into a strix and, presumably, heading out for a bite to eat

I have to say Ciris the Shearer, whether in her human form or bird, is not one of my favourite people. For one thing, she has the unfortunate habit of shitting anywhere and everywhere. The way she tells it, the first time she turned into a bird at the rear end of Minos’ ship, that particular fecal habit seemed to stick. It’s bad enough when she’s a huge-assed bird, but in her human form—it can get kind of awkward. But the real problem was her diet. She kept going to doctors to help with the heartburn, but then she’d get so hungry that she’d turn into a bird without any control, she’d leap off some high place, go get dinner—which unfortunately was bloody human flesh. She’d go country to country, and police everywhere would try to put her in jail, but it never stuck. Kind of like her dad (still has the bald spot), who was rightly pretty pissed at her, and Minos (a jerkwad)—both men tried to kill her, couldn’t quite put her down.

Photo of Carol Shillibeer

BIO: Carol Shillibeer's poems have been published in many print and online publications, and received nominations for both Pushcart and Best of Net. One of her most recent manuscripts language be like won the 2025 Alfred G. Bailey Prize for poetry.