Internet Witch
by Karen L. Newman

She uses her fingers for wands
and incantations turn to code,
as she weaves a web of spells to go online. 
Gone are caldrons, 
broomsticks, and black

cats. Her coven now meets
in a chat room,
avatars holding hands
in a virtual circle. 
There she’s young again,

raven-haired and straight-spined, 
not a crone. Afterwards
she swings across the internet
on zeroes and climbs ladders of ones
into selected computers.

She worms her way inside,
turns files into poison
apples that are bitten with a click,
and then flees from systems
left in permanent sleep mode.

Karen L. Newman lives in Kentucky, where she edits the magazines Illumen and Afterburn SF. Over 250 of her short stories and poems have been published both in print and online, in places such as Star*Line, Dwarf Stars 2006, Dreams and Nightmares, Lone Star Stories, and Cthulhu Sex Magazine. Her poetry collections include EEKU (Sam’s Dot, 2005) and ChemICKals (Naked Snake Press, 2007). She won the 2005 Kentucky State Poetry Society Mary Jane Barnes Award, and two of her poems received honorable mention in The Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror. She is an active member of Horror Writers Association and also writes reviews for Dark Discoveries. Please visit her online at: http://home.zoomnet.net/~karennew