Réka Nyitrai and Alan Peat

The order of the white feather girl

A boy finds a white pebble on the riverbank. He strokes the pebble until it becomes a beautiful girl. Just as he moves to kiss her on the lips, she jumps into the river. Floating there, she asks him to flail his skin, fashion a bag from it, fill the bag with gravel, then throw it into the water. She says that there is no other way for her to retrieve her lost wings. 

warm stone dust—
a Siren emerging
from a marble block

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About the Authors

Réka Nyitrai is a spell, a sparrow, a lioness’s tongue — a bird nest in a pool of dusk. She is the recipient of a Touchstone Distinguished Books Award for 2020 for her debut haiku volume While Dreaming Your Dreams (Valencia, Spain: Mono Ya Mono Books, 2020). Her prose poems have appeared in Otoliths, Unbroken Journal, Pithead Chapel, Heliosparrow Poetry Journal,  NOON: journal of the short poem, Obliterat Journal, and others. 

Alan Peat is a UK-based poet and author. His work has featured in Frogpond, Mayfly, Heliosparrow, The Heron’s Nest, Presence, Hedgerow, and Blithe Spirit, among others. He was runner-up in the 2021 British Haiku Society’s Ken and Norah Jones Haibun Award and joint third-place winner in the 2022 Time Haiku ekphrastic haibun contest.