I stand above you
On earth made unholy
You thought you could not be mine
Rot silences your voice
And in death I shall control you
And my murmurings wake your bones
Magic and manipulation
Summoned from the pit
Your decaying form
Does my bidding
Dancing
Under my will
On ground unholy
You are mine
Bindi Lavelle is a proud Wakka-Wakka woman, based in Meanijin (Brisbane), Australia, where she lives with her cat Scully. She is a writer, editor for ibecomethebeast.com and lover of all things strange and unusual.
at midnight I come
search for the constellation's
bent light among shadowless clouds
journey between my birth and my death
to the center of heaven or hell
space and dreams interchange
with the real, the not, and the wished for
I stretch my hand upward to touch
the water-vapoured air of god
connected, elemental, pure
in this place nothing moves back or forward
time itself flickers in sequences
of fire, fluid, limitless
the constellations illuminate my senses
sensual, carnal, caressing, sexual, exquisite
faceless, black-gowned shapes whisper
of redemption through destruction
of surrender to their tender atrocities
to live once more uninterrupted
deserted of the body's hungers
my world, powerless, returns
my night's journey complete
naked arms no longer raised
my shadow fall from my shoulders
I stand complete, but unanswered
requiem nativitatis
erasing the year's toll
hair combed,cut and oiled
freshly pressed, his only suit
laid out for them to dress him
his nakedness impersonal
under incandescent light
on a table,hands in repose
eyes free now of tears,closed
but for eternity no longer blind
committed to our memory
"once born, once married,
twice a father and once dead."*
*echoing Karl Shapiro
Joseph A Farina is a retired lawyer in Sarnia, Ontario, Canada. drawing from his profession and his sicilian-canadian back round, he is an internationaly award winning poet. Several of his poems have been published in Quills Canadian Poetry Magazine,The Wild Word,The Chamber Magazine, Lothlorian Poetry Journal,Ascent ,Subterranean Blue and in The Tower Poetry Magazine, Inscribed, The Windsor Review, Boxcar Poetry Revue , and appears in many anthologies including: Sweet Lemons: Writings with a Sicilian Accent, Canadian Italians at Table, Witness from Serengeti Press and Tamaracks: Canadian Poetry for the 21st Century . He has had poems published in the U.S. magazines Mobius, Pyramid Arts, Arabesques, Fiele-Festa, and Philedelphia Poets . He has had two books of poetry published— The Cancer Chronicles and The Ghosts of Water Street.
the night has a thousand eyes
she goes to the rail car diner
on Route 1 when she needs
to think. It serves American comfort
food favorites but the waitress
Sam, has nails box-
jobbed raw as dog bones
& the man in the next booth
checks his phone, the window
the door, the sedans
pulling up dry-gulched
in dark fat clips
of rain. The night has
a thousand eyes, she wants
to tell him, each more prying
than the last. Her husband
painted hers with a stiff jab
every time he came home
from the strip, the secret
beyond the door only
a secret if you can’t follow the plot.
She knew the game, got
a raw deal, a bad deck
loaded dice, doesn’t
matter what you call it
because now she needs
to think about getting rid
of a body.
She eases off the sun cheaters
& rolls booth boy a hooded wink.
‘This place has great pie.’
He’s guilty & down for anything.
drive, just drive
rifle the boiler, tip the bucket
on a thin
black eyebrow of road
pigstick the tarmac, rip the iron
drive, just
drive
don’t stop
to count the
rhino
bent car, burn powder
past the Bowladrome, the creep
joint
fog the flivver, pickpocket
the asphalt, drive
drive, just
rifle the boiler, make the border
before we’re
filled with daylight
if it’s a crime story
the chambermaid
finds her
in a heart-shaped
hot tub
pills tic-
tac the floor
& a red hair dryer
floats
the dead calm
a safety deposit box
stashed in a Greyhound Bus locker
holds the key to her identity
his
cash, jewels
something old
new
borrowed
blue
not the listless gray
pulling a switch
over the Poconos
where a woman
who’s not in a crime story
comes to a dying honeymoon
resort to mourn
the end
of her marriage
then
the telephone rings.
there is something
she is forgetting.
nobody
was
supposed
to get
hurt.
ANXIETY OF GUILT
There never was a time when guilt
didn’t sit just below my clavicle.
If genetic guilt is possible, I know
how it travels packaged in the lining
of the uterus where it feeds on my soul
just as pregnancy ate the calcium from
my bones and teeth,
yet births continued, through ignorance
and the too infrequent pleasure of sex,
but like a drug addict’s call, the beckon
of climax too great to ignore.
I know it’s contagious
and always there, hardly buried
in the day-to-day issues of life
where it arises on a perfect day
to swamp pleasure with anxiety.
I can see the veins on the top of my
hands that used to be smooth, a cliché
reminiscence of mother’s hands.
the skin so thin, a tap leaves a reddened
rose of remembrance, like guilt,
it fades slowly.
NAME UNSPOKEN
His name lies on our tongues
never voiced
a memory that wanders through us
dragging its pain like shredded flesh,
bloodied and defiled.
We talk around him when we talk at all
as if his being doesn’t sit with us still,
as if his mind wasn’t beyond his learning.
his guitar playing so natural
all who heard were amazed.
As if the adoration of his dog,
big and clumsy and mourning
at the top of the stairs
didn’t tell us what we already knew.
We never talk about the night;
the police refusing entrance
his body hanging stilled
as if our imaginations didn’t speed past
the reality of the horror, the loss, the emptiness,
the gut-wrenching explosion of pain upon hearing
he was no more.
Pat Tyrer is a writer and lover of literature who walks the canyons of West Texas watching birds when the sun is up and star gazing when it’s not. She loves poetry that sits in your mouth and fiction that speaks in mysterious and haunting ways. See more of her work at www.wordstreet.net
I WONDER WHAT I WOULD BE LIKE HAD YOU LOVED ME
HAD YOU CRADLED ME IN YOUR ARMS INSTEAD OF USING THEM TO SUFFOCATE ME
HAD YOU BEEN PROUD OF THE CHILD YOU CREATED INSTEAD OF WISHING YOU ABORTED ME
HAD YOU NURTURED MY DEVELOPMENT INSTEAD OF REGRESSING MY CAPABILITIES
WHAT WOULD I BE LIKE HAD YOU LOVED ME?
HAD YOU INSISTED I WAS VALUABLE INSTEAD OF TELLING ME TO KILL MYSELF
HAD YOU SUPPORTED MY ASPIRATIONS INSTEAD OF CALLING ME YOUR BIGGEST MISTAKE
HAD YOU CONVINCED ME I WAS IMPORTANT INSTEAD OF LABELING ME A STUPID CUNT
WHAT WOULD I BE LIKE HAD YOU LOVED ME?
HAD YOU PROTECTED MY INNOCENCE INSTEAD OF DEFENDING THOSE WHO SEVERED IT FROM ME
HAD YOU GUARDED THE SECRETS I ENTRUSTED UPON YOU INSTEAD OF EXPOSING AND BERATING ME
HAD YOU CALLED ME BABY OR PRINCESS INSTEAD OF ABORTION CHILD
WHAT WOULD I BE LIKE HAD YOU LOVED ME?
WE WOULD HOLD HANDS AT THE PARK AND ADMIRE FIELDS OF BRIGHT YELLOW DAFFODILS
WE WOULD WEAR MATCHING SUN HATS AND SHARE AN ICE CREAM SUNDAE, WITH TWO BIG SPOONS
WE WOULD GO ON DAY TRIPS AND LAUGH UNTIL WE COULDN’T STOP LAUGHING, THEN WE WOULD LAUGH, AND LAUGH SOME MORE
WE WOULD WEAR FLEECE PAJAMAS AND WATCH MOVIES TOGETHER UNTIL I FELL ASLEEP, THEN YOU WOULD KISS MY FOREHEAD AND WHISPER, I LOVE YOU
I WOULD WAKE UP THE NEXT MORNING AND YOU WOULD STILL LOVE ME
HAD YOU LOVED ME
Morgan Phaneuf is an aspiring poet and author from the Quiet Corner of Connecticut. A proud mother, wilderness enthusiast, and karaoke queen, she strives to bring consolation to those who relate to the uncomfortability expressed in her writing. Focusing on authentic experiences, she re-creates trauma into words of empowerment.
Hermann (Arminius) at the battle of the Teutoburg Forest in 9 CE by Peter Jannsen, 1873, with painting creases and damage removed [from Wikimedia Commons]
We slog through thick, wet foliage, our leather boots sinking in summer’s decay
Gone are the olive groves and aqueducts of home, the assurances of mortar and stone, order and symmetry
Our imperial writ probes ever outward, seeking purchase where none exists
And in so doing, we encroach upon inhospitable climes of godlessness
Its demonic denizens challenge our foolhardy advance, as rabid howls soar through the pitch black of night, followed by gurgles of agony and cackles of glee
Daylight reveals crimson growth overhead, along with pools of crimson carnage underfoot
Slick, red wicker-hewn standards hung with the entrails of our dead loom at the peripheries of civility
Such brazen mockeries of our might expose the pink underbelly of imperial overreach
Earth’s appendages retract and wither as frost proclaims its presence, and our beacon of dominion wanes with the light of day
The devil’s deluge continues unabated, sapping our vigor in an implacable torrent of indifference
The ground hardens, and thieving winds steal away warmth, stranding us in a world wanting for succor and mercy
Our tattered legion eventually splinters on the devil’s predatory persistence, his arbitrary malice overrunning neatly fashioned defenses in waves of feral bloodlust
Disemboweled and bled dry, our husk of imperial zeal is too brittle to sustain the weight of its own avarice
Night eventually outlasts day, and for our surviving few, the devil now has a name
Arminius speaks to us in fleeting whispers, and while his words are strange, his intentions are not
We are told of his travels, and of his ship, a blood red halo in the sky
Soon we'll depart, he says, seeding our minds with assurances, and promises of the void’s wonders
But we've endured his unholy culling, seen him unearth depravity’s deepest depths, and know the reality will be far worse
Andrew Leonard (he/his/him) is an aspiring speculative fiction author and poet with a passion for all things science fiction, fantasy, and horror. He lives in Illinois with his wife, daughter, and two Golden Doodles, who rule the roost. He has written numerous articles on foreign policy and geopolitics, and, admittedly, has what some call an unhealthy obsession with the war in Ukraine.
Fiddle-strike flint,
crucifix is hollow,
dancing by the fire
straight into the morrow.
Stomping on the ashes,
cawing like a crow,
dressed up in the ire,
down and down we go.
Smoke is in the air,
blood is on the ground,
fire-burned desire
inhaling all around.
Two are in the cabin,
one is in the sea,
dancing by the fire
to the tale of misery
Sammy T. Anderson is a Writer, Actor and Filmmaker originally from Pierceton, Indiana. His poetry has been featured in Halcyon Days, The Twin Bill and The Poetry Cove. For more of his work, follow him on instagram: @sammytanderson
a halo of blood
frames her head
her outstretched hands
clutching roses -
their red petals hemorrhaging
at her sandaled feet-
black husks- withered
to be swept away
with unanswered prayers
and offerings
of burnt out votive candles
to empty benedictions
the danger in reading words in darkness alone
succumbing to social media
voices constant texting
labeling you,
believing
- multi windowed messages
in your darkened room
door locked -
safe -
alone -
no one aware
they will all
profess disbelief
you showed no outward signs
just a lingering love
of dead poets
and their dead words.
portrait
polluted
the serpentine river
coils its path
kissing the mold covered rocks
weathered and torn
by night's wicked waves
gulls gibber mournful
a garbaged sigh
beneath the arch of whispering lies
where words of love intently die
established patterns
etched in lace
brown and rotted
hung in rooms, lighted
by TV sets
shining the cruel light
that man cannot live by
while practicing joy
of hair oil and grease
between the late movie
that offers no peace
and stale crumpled linen
of his unmade bed
where day break shall find him
still lonely
still dead.
Joseph A Farina is a retired lawyer in Sarnia, Ontario, Canada. An internationaly award winning poet. Several of his poems have been published in Quills Canadian Poetry Magazine,The Wild Word,The Chamber Magazine, Lothlorian Poetry Journal,Ascent ,Subterranean Blue and in The Tower Poetry Magazine, Inscribed, The Windsor Review, Boxcar Poetry Revue , and appears in many anthologies including: Sweet Lemons: Writings with a Sicilian Accent, Canadian Italians at Table, Witness from Serengeti Press and Tamaracks: Canadian Poetry for the 21st Century . He has had poems published in the U.S. magazines Mobius, Pyramid Arts, Arabesques, Fiele-Festa, and Philedelphia Poets . He has had two books of poetry published— The Cancer Chronicles and The Ghosts of Water Street .
You must have forgotten
how many holes you have,
those unguarded doors
leading to dark wet places
you can’t reach to itch
if something sinister crawls
up in there, while you sleep.
That pesky stray eyelash
you keep trying to flick away, rinse out,
is not an eyelash after all.
It’s me: that spider you barely missed,
now decorating your eye socket
with tiny eggs by the dozen,
using your eyelid for a blanket
and dangling out just one leg, to stay cool.
I learned that trick from you.
Just wait till I teach my children.
Mike Lavine is a lawyer, biker, and writer of fiction somewhere between horror and comedy. A native of Barbados who now lives in San Francisco, Mike spends his spare time eavesdropping on other people’s conversations for dialogue ideas as he walks to the office.
I have at times been one
possessed of fire and darkness
in the black hours courting evil
in sight of the silent sacred houses
and the fearsome moonlit woods
mumbling words only I understood
made signs of earth and stone
survived the madness and returned
ashamed at times and wanting blood
I have been both within and out the circle
and have kissed the serpents tongue
skid noir
drinking cheap whiskey at one night stand hotels
sirens moan outside down empty weed choked alleys
homeless gypsies in rags like ghosts pass by broken windows
ambulances and police cars leave trails of red and blue
the skidyard holds its secrets as boxcars rumble through the night
cheap glasses on scarred tabletops hold ice cubes
melting in the weak air conditioned barroom
stains on warping wooden floors both blood and piss
mark where lost souls fought and lost dignity and more
alone against the wall afraid and drunk, he stands
his night ends here in a musty backroom and unmade bed
the sounds of diesel engines roaring in the darkness
his shadows conspiring to choke him as he tries to sleep
as he slips into the coldness of unconsciousness
waking without memory in sweat and grime
his morning a hoarse continuation of his nightmare
a resident of the madhouse that is his life
the terrible morning revealing beggars, heretics and thieves
in silence he walks down cracked avenues
his head droning like flies on roadkill
walking in his sunrise's twilight curse
he sees behind uncurtained windows
faceless inhabitants under flickering lights
echoes of yesterdays before his horror took him
bathed in red and blue the sirens sound as the boxcars roll
Joseph A Farina is a retired lawyer in Sarnia, Ontario, Canada. An internationally award winning poet. Several of his poems have been published in Quills Canadian Poetry Magazine, The Wild Word, The Chamber Magazine, Lothlorian Poetry Journal, Ascent ,Subterranean Blue and in The Tower Poetry Magazine, Inscribed, The Windsor Review, Boxcar Poetry Revue , and appears in many anthologies including: Sweet Lemons: Writings with a Sicilian Accent, Canadian Italians at Table, Witness from Serengeti Press and Tamaracks: Canadian Poetry for the 21st Century . He has had poems published in the U.S. magazines Mobius, Pyramid Arts, Arabesques, Fiele-Festa, Philadelphia Poets and Memoir (and) . He has had two books of poetry published— The Cancer Chronicles and The Ghosts of Water Street .
If you liked these poems, you might also like “Nightwalker” by Joseph Farina, which was published in August 2021.
Some semblance of wit running down the track, triggers hordes of bodies plowing strange forms to escape it. Leave my rum madness encased in my mind! lest I lose this unearthly tenderness
I trust God in the earthly crevices where time does not exist; misshapen moons of some other worldliness disguised by mediocrity, where slivers of humanity prevent the uncanny from rearing its common head.
Midnight comes decoding messages on even-numbered lives, marked as clear as the language that saves them.
Slip down the path where peace is eerie, silence loud with the weight of the world. My body skips on the bias, feet trimming each side of the forsaken street.
Holding in dry hands, my heart full with tumult, the flaccid joy of an unremarkable life.
Ashleigh Genus (@themeltedmind) is a Black Caribbean-American artist, born and raised in New York. Her poems have been published by Poetry Under Cover, The Latte Press, and Sweet-Thang Magazine.
In view of the bleachers and the Little League diamond.--
night game, or no, we will make our way.
The sand drifts into the dry grass, and the killdeer cries
in its dust bath. Moths dither in the light that
cannot devour the moonlight.
Our cars arrive, and then, the pack -- on motorcycles.
There will be laughter, and scraps of remembering
the last month, and then we will move into the circle.
Our one high note of defiance will plume upward,
a demand for dark sky, before skin melts
and teeth erupt, and claws shed their civility.
Nothing clings -- not wedding rings, not wallets
tucked with kindergarten portraits, not passports,
or even the smiles of the littlest basemen.
All of that will fall within teeth, tails and tears.
Maxime
You are blue of jewels,
on your skull, and ribcage,
and I do not mock you.
Someone has found a blessing within you --
a gold coin, a star -- rose petals, even.
Love is not lost with the dissolution of atoms.
Only, leave for me one sacred splinter.
This is enough for me to carry home
for my own fine and secret bones.
Backstairs Ghost
At 2 a.m. I sit at the kitchen table,
looking at bills, drinking Coke.
There's a creak, and my husband appears.
"What are you doing?" I ask.
He smiles and says, "Wandering."
He is not a ghost, just then,
but a man clinging to the Earth
with its tendrils and vines, its October crows
and poetry in passages of dark and light.
I summon him aloud, on the same stairs.
This house lives for the living, but
a word abides in an unquiet heart.
The Crocodile, Bound
When I realized I had forgotten you,
I rushed to the chamber of purple lights
and dull music. You, waiting, ensconced,
for me -- what was there then, but
these strips of linen, failing?
In your golden eyes of sleep,
in your river of dark space,
close, we are, in this cloth,
with no blood unraveled.
The Incorruptible
I caught you laughing at the purple bones,
draped in their satin, sitting upright.
Then did my love for you melt away
like sugar in a drink of rum.
Skeletons rise up, and dance, until they
tire of you. And I once wept to hold this
body of knowing, warm, in some
fiction of sleep. Every shadow body of mine
walks in waking, flesh in red hair, singing,
sighing, but not apart from me,
as now I lie in dreams apart from you.
Meg Smith is a writer, journalist, dancer and events producer based in Lowell, Mass. Recent publication credits include The Cafe Review, The Horror Zine, Dark Moon Digest, and many more.
She is author of five poetry books and a short fiction collection, The Plague Confessor. She welcomes visits to megsmithwriter.com.
If you enjoyed these poems, you might also enjoy the tale of horror, “Thin Skin” by Kilmo.
I dreamt my love there lost on a raft.
I dreamt I tried to care
And clung to the other half.
I dreamt I offered her a drink
The dregs white
White
As the white heart of a ghost.
I dreamt she started to sink
Her hand upraised in a skeleton’s toast,
And I dreamt I tried a sexy wink,
And my closed mouth
Tried a clenched kiss.
I dreamt she whispered bitterly:
“Resist, Resist.”
Thomas White has a triple identity: speculative fiction writer, poet, and essayist. His poems, fiction, and essays have appeared in online and print literary journals and magazines in Australia, the United States, Canada, and the United Kingdom. He is also a Wiley-Blackwell Journal author who has contributed essays to various nonliterary journals on topics ranging from atheism, the meaning of Evil, Elon Musk, Plato, The Matrix, and reality as a computer simulation. In addition, he has presented three of his essays to the West Chester University Poetry Conference (West Chester, Pennsylvania), as well as read his poetry on Australian radio.
for Michael Mushrush
Take off your mask.
If you have one.
Let the world feel your wounds.
The first one to scream
is your angel.
Close your eyes.
And follow its wings.
If it bleeds
you are damned.
But forgiveness
was never an option anyway.
So shake it off.
And smile louder.
True terror lies.
Locked
behind teeth.
Broken.
By a soul.
A.J. Huffman is a poet and freelance writer in Daytona Beach, Florida. She has published 27 collections and chapbooks of poetry. In addition, she has published her work in numerous national and international literary journals. She is currently the editor for Kind of a Hurricane Press literary journals ( www.kindofahurricanepress.com ).
If you liked this poem, you might also like the dark, modernist short story “The Masks” by Kimberley Luxton.
THE ROOM IS YELLOW
The room is yellow.
The yellow of withered fruit,
The tinge of mildew, sickness,
The haze of misremembered bad dreams.
The room can only be yellow.
Never red or green
Or purple
Or even blue
Because the room has never held you
Within it
As I have and
As I do,
Although I cannot hold you without
Anymore.
The room has never held you as you slept
Or stared into you as you laughed
Or cried
Or came
Or seen you dress
Or heard your whispers
Both tender and tranquil.
I would give anything
For this room
To be green or red
Or purple
Or even covered
In the sad pall
Of blue
But the room is yellow
And my soul is blue and bruised,
Covered in this yellow film
Like diseased and turgid
Dust.
SPITTED NAILS
I lie upon the rack
Spitting nails into the air
That land upon me –
Pointing down and driving into my flesh.
Again and again I spit
And the metal missiles itself upward
And then dives downward,
Into me, into me, into me.
I do not spit fire.
I do not spit ice.
I do not spit calm or salve
Or paint or passion or knowledge or love.
I only spit nails that hold me fast and immobile.
I have never spit out that key
To fit the lock
That fastens the chain
Held to me
By all those spitted nails
Although the key has resided in my belly.
It sits there still.
I spit another nail that aims for the sky
And falls
To my flesh.
I spit and I spit.
STIGMATA BLOOD
Leonard Cohen is dead after ohming for years in the ashram
And leaving his offerings of written flesh from time to time
In piles in the middle of the street
For the flock to ponder.
Rumi whirled like a dervish for the Lord
And Allen Ginsberg sang Kaddish
Into his grandmother’s old black shoe.
Meanwhile –
Tonight, like every night,
I lie in this bed alone
With the
Stigmata blood soaking
Black, thick and homely
Right through the brains
Of my coarse gray bedsheets
And onto the endless cosmos
That is my floor.
John Tustin’s poetry has appeared in many disparate literary journals since 2009. fritzware.com/johntustinpoetry contains links to his published poetry online.
You are afraid of the light
that burns inside you
like an unborn child
A thousand tiny spiders
gnawing at your bones
You are cautious of the wind
that brings a plague upon its wing
A fetid, ebon miracle
like a monster in the clouds
that swallows cruel men whole
You are sure that something's breeding there
Your body is not your own
And the sky is full of tumors
that terrorize the soul
You inhale the song of the universe
Fall asleep inside its chaotic womb
You find refuge in a lullaby
as the cancer chews away
The stars shed light that blinds your eyes
Your home is the darkness of a dream
A coldness in the white,
obscene infinity
The Dance
We cling to childhood
That epileptic dance
Of chaos and lace
A fire burning
In the face of madness
Where the death bell tolls each midnight:
The lonely sound
Of a heartbeat
Thorns
You wear your crown so perfectly
both saints and sinners weep.
You whisper dirge songs in your sleep
while the blood runs warm, still, in your veins.
You shed your skin in hopes to join your
lover in the grave,
To save your mortal soul from the heat
of a burning flame.
You play the martyr much better than I.
There's a sacrifice I'm not willing to make.
But, aren't we all like lambs to the slaughter,
hobbling about on broken knees?
Our demon seed strewn over this doomed land.
Bodies splattered across the threshold of paradise.
Morgues and graveyards fill to excess.
And I am left to clean up the mess.
Stephanie Smith is a poet and writer from Scranton, Pennsylvania. Her work has appeared in such publications as PIF MAGAZINE, WHISTLING SHADE, NOT ONE OF US, THE HORROR ZINE, ILLUMEN, and LIQUID IMAGINATION. She can be found on Twitter @horrorsteph78 or at imajican.blogspot.com.
In the final corners of the night
Lie the crumb-starved remnants of sleep.
Your mind lies elsewhere, picking at wounds
That once were only skin-deep.
Along the narrow tracks of the bed
Run three paths out of the room,
Two of them ending only in dread,
The other, the crack of doom.
The uneven plaster slapped on the wall
Betrays a zig-zag plot
That inches toward infinity
Like a never-boiling pot.
Your awkward writhings under the sheet
Enact a suppressed demonstration
Against some horribly unfair law
That crucifies you to your station.
The light from the hallway beckons
Like a baleful reminder of God
Transformed to a crab-faced clown
Who’ll never so much as nod.
Ten statues of inability
Crouch in disfigured stone,
Rehearsing all your failures
Until you’re entirely alone.
Did you leave the gas on, gas on, gas on?
Your conscience asks with a stammer.
In just a few stunted hours,
The day will return with a hammer.
A handful of pills that flood the system;
The countdown begins at two.
The only stranger in the bed
Is no one else but you.
Precipitation
After the rain, the puddles recede,
Minor mutinies that flow
From the emptied plaza to
The narrow, draining streets below,
Pooling all their capital
Into a bank of mud
That hasn’t seen so much as a trickle
Of oil, sweat, or blood.
Since the time of the abattoir,
The gutter holds its own supply.
Even the air feels lighter,
Free of the lowering sky
Like a skittering horse without reins
Or a turbulent waterway
Purged of the urge to drown
Whoever escapes the fray,
Until the oncoming reign,
Hazy but looming huge,
Building toward another flood.
Après moi, le deluge.
David Galef has published over 200 poems in places ranging from The Yale Review and The Gettysburg Review to Witness and Measure, as well as two poetry books, Flaws and Kanji Poems, and two chapbooks, Lists and Apocalypses. Day job: professor of English and creative writing program director at Montclair State University; also editor of Vestal Review, the longest-running flash fiction magazine on the planet. www.davidgalef.com, @dgalef.
Tell me, were you looking for fortune, were you looking for gold?
When you dragged me with those peccant hands from the earth?
Or were you burying a secret, were you hiding your lies?
When you seized my body and pulled it away?
Tell me, did someone see you?
Did the woods shriek?
When the moss fell off my body and the dead leaves quivered.
Tell me, did my cold touch fondle you?
Did my crusted blood prick you?
Did you look at me, dead, in the eyes?
Was I still me? Did you find me in that pallid green?
Was I more beguiling? Spiritless and motionless?
Was your eulogy a lie told to the crowd?
Why did you come back?
Did you forget the knife?
Perfidy
I foresaw your betrayal months before it happened.
I perceived it, I sensed it, I expected it.
I became aware of your presence lurking at the windows, gazing at the horizon, looking for a way out.
The gates were closed and the doors were sealed but in my bones, I felt your itch for freedom.
I heard your silent apostasy.
I knew you wanted to leave me.
I caught sight of your shadow creeping behind me while I was asleep.
I watched you sharpening knives in a house that never eats.
I recognized your anguish, your indecisiveness, your torment flooding the corridors of our temple of love.
I found you under a cypress, humming a tune that wasn’t mine.
I caught you unfolding an image from your pocket, just to press it on your lips and stash it away.
So I did nothing when you cowardly decided to stab me in the back.
I didn’t plead.
I didn’t cry.
I didn’t scream.
I just turned to you, so you could look into my eyes one last time, while my blood was painting murals of love on white walls.
Keea Mihaly it’s an aspiring writer from Transylvania. She graduated with a BA in archaeology from the Babeș-Bolyai University.
When she doesn’t write dark poetry by candlelight in her coffin-shaped bed you can find her taking pictures of the moon and doing tarot readings to strangers.
She threatens to bite
if they get too close
her body sun-painted
pure
her backpack and robe
on the curve of the shore
she covers her ears
crowd closing in
their voices
wanting more than a touch
for she's far from old
preparing to leave this hell
wet sand
up to her ankles
wave wash
up to her knees
holding her arms out
bearing her cross
the crowd halts
eyes wide unable to blink
she stands firm
in the sand and salt of the sea
ocean settling
into an immense pool of silence
seagulls circling
singing songs with actual words
thousands of fish rising
spinning in a dance
a distant whale surfacing
huge with angry eyes
crowd running
back into the sins of the city
now understanding
she's one of the chosen ones
soon to be raptured
out of this world.
Longing
He touched you
often
unable to sleep
until he filled you
with his poetry
and you took
his words
as someone else's
not believing
every syllable
was only for you
Years later
remembering
when you left
him
you had the one
most women long for
and now you regret
never
seeing
him again
rereading
poem after poem
a thousand pages
just for you
dying
little by little
on every word.
Bitter
Everything at her fingertips
And everyone
But no one completely
All these years
Looks and body
Eye-catcher near perfect
Until age bent her bitter
Teeth sharpening into a horror
Cavities decaying
Mine effigies
Oozing from her brain pores
Snake ghosts
Bread of dry crumbling cells
Burnt toast
Wrapped in a hardening cocoon
Captivity hung
Nightmare on a hangman's noose
Sobbing until cutting loose
The fall
A last grasp
Changing slap
Picking herself up
Stumbling to the pond in the garden
Moon-mirror waters
Kneeling
Quake
Cupping her hands to drink
Ripples of time she tastes
Finally understanding herself
Acceptance of mercy
Bitterness into freedom
Beautiful wilting of a flower.
“Bitter” was first published in “Black Poppy Review”, May 2018.
Stephen Jarrell Williams loves to stay up all night and write with lightning bolts until they fizzle down behind the dark horizon. He was editor of Dead Snakes, UFO Gigolo, and Calvary Cross. He can be found on Twitter as papapoet.
Graves open
in twilight.
Unfortunate soldiers
stuck
beneath sedimentary rock.
Minds drip
ping like red streams.
A dark shoreline filled
the tears
of aimless wanderers
dreaming
of another life.
Jamie Seibel earned a Master’s Degree in Creative Writing with an emphasis in poetry from California State University, Sacramento. Her work is forthcoming in Versification Poetry Zine and Wingless Dreamer. In her spare time, Jamie likes to write short stories, draw, and take nature walks with her dog. She hopes to publish her own poetry collection by next year.
Schiller’s skull
on Goethe’s table
awaits interment.
The unspeakable,
the mothering earth,
impressed with too
many monuments,
is dumb;
unanswered Beethoven’s
out in the cold.
Mann’s Faust,
lost in spiritual ice,
like a crane stretches
from one shipwreck
to the next;
shipwrecked for good,
Schiller’s skull,
thrown up
by an unsteady sea,
lingers on the beach.
Consider the consequences
of genius or exceptional eyes
and ears, limbs and
all the rest;
like the rest of us
consigned to jumping over
fences till death
do you part
from the earthly part,
the dross, the gloss
on the text;
consider the ant,
you dreamers,
and fall back in line.
The fires of creation and
the winds of the muses
blew through Schiller’s head,
possessing him and possessed;
breathed on by divine lips,
eyes rolling like windmills,
he suffered the bread
of pain, the water
of anguish,
scribbled away and
the legions of the lesser
built their castles on his books,
built on his backbone.
Long ago
in the dark German woods
Varus had his problems.
Rome marched back and forth
in the damp and the cold;
the southern Mediterranean light
paled, and went out.
Centuries later
Schiller
turned south;
dignity and sun
drew on enthusiasm;
the sacrifices of yore
dimmed to a point
and then all was light.
Light from the dome
blasted the dark
sides of the temples
white as sheets;
Schiller, at the
zenith of his flight,
unmoving
as Zeno’s arrow
looks out:
an eagle fixed.
Now on a table
his skull
grins at the skill
not lost;
the bard shall not
go speechless to Orcus.
And Goethe,
setting like Antares,
sees a pattern everywhere;
moonlight and
hope at the last.
Goodbye both;
you served us
better than most,
raised us
high as the Venusberg,
sunk us
to the depths
of the Brocken.
Flesh and bone conjurers,
sufferers of human ills,
your secrets are safe
with us,
your honorable works
stand in unbroken ranks.
Immer besser,
immer heiterer,
the dark side,
the light,
live off the flame;
Schiller’s skull,
balanced in Goethe’s hand,
grins like an ape,
and then dies again.
Cassandra
Mystic the moon-pools
of your willful soul,
those secret eyes buried
in your skull,
the skill to see,
looking beyond
the first light.
Dawn doth float
above the uneasy sleep
that God forgets;
heeding the call,
the littlest things,
the very worms,
like Cadmus creatures
of another breed,
wriggling out of the earth
turn to dragons.
You know it
before it happens;
nobody listens.
Alone we two
fain would be;
the forests of
your fair eyebrows knit;
you see it all.
Outside the drawn curtains
the placid lawn takes a breath;
stepping forward in the east
the rosy, the hourless,
the enormous sun
starts up, showing
the rim of its everlasting eye.
Midnight, my cry sounded
up and down the bedroom,
you were gone,
gone your second sight;
I lay wounded,
terrified, despondent.
Impossible in this dawn,
in this day arising,
if you came to me
there would be
less delight
in your sweet presence
than knowing the future;
forget, forget,
at noon I work
spider spinning,
industrious.
Onward the sun on course,
dropping down the heavens
towards night;
across this land comes
twilight slowly, then
dark and then the real
lights of heaven come on,
tiny and distinct,
and here on earth
the false ones.
You see it all,
clear as the neon signs
we see, the future
speaks to you,
impossible burden,
and you tell us
the tragic end
of all our labors,
our mighty strivings.
In your prophecies,
your visions
thrown to the winds,
your truth for us
just as clear
and useless
as broken glass.
New York Down and Dirty
Some people walk
the barrios, the bad areas,
these crowded wicked streets,
these dark and menacing streets,
with a certain step;
no matter what
ken the way, have the means,
have defenses, have no fear, unease
or surmise no abiding danger,
fatal consequence,
vicious attack
of some jack-in-the-box,
a beating by
moon-maddened thugs,
malignant meeting
with some vengeful maniac.
Walking these streets,
others surrender cold turkey,
vox clamantis, to abject fear,
a fear that goes beyond the pale
of ignorance, of frailty
in the face of mayhem.
Look and see
this multifarious sprawl
of latticed streets, the surround of
stoop-ridden slatterns and drunks
punching holes through the fourth wall,
through the musings
of the home-bound banker,
suburbed in bitty splendor;
what does he know
of disorderly and crazy?
Of bumming, begging, stealing,
sniping, brawling;
from quirky aggression
stinking of sweat
or higher than a kite
on parboiled gak?
This damned sorrowful city,
cut up in pieces not alike
for rich and poor.
Where are the steeples
that inspired the Dutch
to dour pride?
The rose-red brick
of blocky orderly buildings?
The clean-swept streets
of old New York?
Hustled away by time
and the march of multitudes.
In truth,
this fabled lush land
of our rapacious forefathers
never was as real
as we make it.
New York! New York!
Gateway to the New World,
metropolis of wealth
side by side
with extravagant poverty;
the light is not for all.
No island gone to hell
but a paradise of vanity,
venality, slum of iniquity,
jagged skyline
of skyscrapers, waiting
to swallow even biblical
Leviathan whole.
Trope of mankind,
overflowing, overflowing,
so many, too many;
jump back;
you're rabbits by the abyss.
Relics appeared in Artifact Nouveau in 2016, and Cassandra in 2019in Scrittura Magazine.
Jack D. Harvey’s poetry has appeared in Scrivener, The Comstock Review, Valparaiso Poetry Review, The Chamber Magazine, Typishly Literary Magazine, The Antioch Review and elsewhere. The author has been a Pushcart nominee and over the years has been published in a few anthologies.
The author has been writing poetry since he was sixteen and lives in a small town near Albany, New York. He is retired from doing whatever he was doing before he retired.
Night mistress
Come quickly darkness
Hide this servant from the eyes
Of Deadly light
Come mistress
Fondle me
In your entwining arms
Sooth me with winds of fantasy
Blind my despair with your dark caresses
Come quickly Night
And sleep wiith me
In our bed of lonliness
Away from the inquiring day
Bare yourself to me
Let me rest in your brief ecstacy
Come quickly Night
Share with me
Your all consuming despair
Come quickly night-my mistress
all souls day
prayers for loved souls to purge their passing
reveal our grief this all souls day
the earth gives up its dead to-night
waiting to be received-
carrying marzipan skeletons
to place on their tombs we bring our offerings
of water, wine, oil and grain
sit and eat with them beside us
sharing our lives with them again-
i begin to recite the prayers for the dead
with the cross, the book, and sword
promising salvation and the cleansing of sins
of those whom we this day commemorate
to pass from their darkness to eternal light
"But though I have wept and fasted,wept and prayed."
T.S.Eliot
black confessions
whispered to a silver cross
shoulders turned away
from paradise
completes the superstition
Joseph A Farina is a retired lawyer in Sarnia, Ontario, Canada. An award winning poet. Several of his poems have been published in Quills Canadian Poetry Magazine, Ascent ,Subterranean Blue and in The Tower Poetry Magazine, Inscribed, The Windsor Review, Boxcar Poetry Revue , and appears in the anthologies Sweet Lemons: Writings with a Sicilian Accent, cabadian Italians at Table, Witness from Serengeti Press and Tamaracks: Canadian Poetry for the 21st Century . He has had poems published in the U.S. magazines Mobius, Pyramid Arts, Arabesques, Fiele-Festa, Philadelphia Poets and Memoir (and) as well as in Silver Birch Press “Me, at Seventeen” Series. He has had two books of poetry published— The Cancer Chronicles and The Ghosts of Water Street .
am I god
am I real
can you catch covid from drinking blood
how to get blood out of white tuxedo
are capes still cool
vampire movies made by vampires
vampire costume cultural appropriation
dream about best friend being garlic monster what does it mean
will I always be ten
how to become human
how to become mortal
alive for thousand years want to die
can’t find partner in appropriate age group
no reflection might have something in teeth
used coffins for sale
what does the sun look like
J. Richard Kron is a writer and musician from Phoenix, Arizona. He holds a BFA in English from Arizona State University.
I saw the man by the river
what man
He was the man with no shadow
dead man
He moved like fog up the sidewalk
walking
I heard a noise at the window
knocking
I saw his eyes in the window
red eyes
his eyes, they were hollow
dead eyes
And then he flowed through the doorway
cursed mist
Then my arm, he was touching
foul fist
taken by fear I could not move
frozen
then his word it was spoken
“chosen”
I gazed at his face
eyes trapped
I felt my soul leave my body
life snapped
We were two men by the river
What men
we were the men with no shadow
dead men
David Newkirk is a retired attorney. He is currently in the Master of Fine Arts program at the University of Missouri, Kansas City, where he is actively unlearning thirty years of writing like a lawyer.
The day glossed, lost to a tar black starry brush
The trees bare, stare at the water’s moonlit rush.
Waking leaves, unmaking their burnt orange bed
Walking, talking, eulogize departed seasons dead.
The year near end and only quarter full
The dark dresses the wolf in winter’s wool.
Algo is from Ireland. In self imposed self isolation, Algo only wears black and enjoys studying the school of Austrian Economics, reading comic books and meditating. Algo once believed he was a nihilist but now believes in something higher.
