Night Song
by Geoffrey O’Brien
Through vale hall
the sea noise
bloweth forever
in utter darkness
—Just ask the lady
who stole the tape
so she could listen
without stirring
from her cabin
in the middle of the mountain
The Visitor
by Geoffrey O’Brien
just past the fingertips
just where the voice stops
just above the skull dome
just behind the neck bone
just beyond eye range
just out of earshot
a bit too far to walk to
a bit too small to make out
much too wide to size up
much too loose to grab hold of
it has been hovering
for what seems like always
and has always
just zipped off
The VIGIL
by Geoffrey O’Brien
After so many years
it comes to this—
To be standing
by the open door
in an icy wind
at midnight
waiting for the absent mother
to emerge
as a mad ghost
from the surrounding dark—
She must be out there
somewhere roaming around—
As I stifle the urge
to call toward the shadows
as if to someone
late getting home—
House of the Moon
by Amelia Gorman
You thought this mountain cottage would be empty,
where the moss wraps the path from your fuming car.
Your breath gets thinner as you climb into the sky,
but one foot just keeps passing the other.
"Careful girl, the moon lives on that mountain," says a story,
"alone in a big house with her knives and her hunger."
Just as if you're the owner of little skin pins or a five-toothed key,
you wiggle your hand into the giant lock on the door.
Something eats your skeptic vandal fingers right away.
You say, "I'm sorry, I only came here looking for
a phone to call back home. You see, my
mother's awful worried. Sent me out to find my brother."
The moon motions you through her manor's crumbling entry,
guides you to her phone, she's kinder than before
but she looks at your other hand with a starving eye.
It's a dated lime green piece of circle and number
that you dial with your newfound human ivory.
The voice on the end reminds you, you were sent to find another.
Don't come back without him. Else your family
will throw you out into the winter,
trying to pick your old lock with your finger.
Or the moon will eat you slowly. So you stay.
What is Patience Worth?
by Amelia Gorman
"Many moons ago I lived. Again I come. Patience Worth my name… The time for work is past. Let the tabby drowse and blink her wisdom to the firelog.”
—Patience Worth to Pearl Curran via Ouija Board, 1913
Without knowing what side of the river
you come from (maybe my own spindles,
dendrite and webs inside an endless skull),
I shiver in the winter of your words.
I imagine flapper hands, roaming across letters
that are too hard, fractured, not the treble
of your voice. In that serrated character
there is a second of doubt. Did she invent you
like Hildegard von Bingen and her lingua ignota?
I'm sure Aunt Blavatsky would say
'there is no time to look back, or under the table,
no time to show them the backs of your hands.'
Adding, 'hold the egg white in your mouth for hours
while you murmur through layers of cheese cloth'
that might really still be sloughed ghostskin.
And Mother Shipton would tell me
to weather the petrifying chill in the air
because it takes as long to learn to hear the dead
as it does for my body to turn to stone in her well.
Time is slender and dripping and growing
rough and rigid, holding in a gustless breath,
each letter passes like slow liquid, single file
through the planchette.
Leaving a lifetime of neurons to untangle in the end:
Your wicket things, shadows covered in bloom
and missives draped heavy with veils.
I wait angling at the delta, hoping to pull forth either patience or pearls.
weather
by William Lessard
The night that became
night. We open the door
in the middle of our bed.
The door is candy corn tear.
The door is blue giant
ear. You go first. I follow.
The map says call ghosts.
You call with the side
of your hand. No ghosts.
You call. Not a ripple
in the curtain dark. I say
call with a different voice.
You cup your hand, call
as the girl that stands
behind your eyes. The girl
is ripped dress tacked
to a post. The girl is
blood wiped from the tip
of his favorite tie. I know
this girl. She thinks she's
hiding, but I catch her.
I've seen her often peering
out, sometimes with eyes bolted
to the jewels of foreign fingers.
Her voice is your lace curtain
voice, speaking in gasoline flame.
All the ghosts know her. All the ghosts
know you. They appear as smoke
blown beneath a door. This is how
the night begins. Your voice, this tree.
Melting Into Ether
by Tess Congo
That all his wives had disappeared like comets,
evanescent beauties melting into ether.
That he mourned briefly, donning black
before replacing it with another crimson suit,
another ceremony.
What could we believe from the whispers?
His wives are the devil’s price for wealth;
he’s a blood drinker, and they his ambrosia;
the beard is his curse, blue as his wives dead;
they poison themselves, anything
to escape him; he burns their bodies.
That his death was plotted a thousand times
by smaller men; slice his throat, take
the circle of keys at his belt, claim
his castle and all the treasures within.
That when Bluebeard returned again and again
to our village on his ebony steed, we knew;
another one was dead.
And finally, my sister and I were the last
unwed women in the village. By then,
we had shifted our fabrics inside out to hide
the threads come undone. By then, our father
had turned the doorway into a coffin
when he walked through it, his death
a choice he did or did not deserve,
and our mother—fighting
for the last crumbs for our table, wept
One of you must marry him.
The White Jester
by Cathy McArthur
A jester appeared behind my mother’s door,
dressed in white
pointing at her and laughing.
She said my brother saw it too;
he was afraid.
A jester with an odd-shaped hat
in her doorway, motioning like a mime—
she didn’t understand what he said;
she had to wake up that morning.
Down the hall my brother, on cocaine,
waited for her social security check.
The fool in the dream with his laugh terrified her.
She had to wake up
to get rid of it.
After Playing the Mother in Dead of Winter
by Katie Manning
“Dead of Winter... puts 2-5 players in a small, weakened colony of survivors in a world where most of humanity is either dead or diseased, flesh-craving monsters.”
—Board Game Geek
My son and I push through a crowd of people. There’s not enough room for everyone on the helicopter ahead of us, and this is urgent. Suddenly, the ground rumbles, and we are standing on a plane. The plane gains speed and lifts into the air. It veers right and descends. My stomach sinks. We get off the plane in a large grassy field. Isolated bodies wander slowly around us. I tell my son to run with me, but when I turn and see his face—blackened eyes, hanging flesh too white across his cheek and mouth—I know it’s just too late. I pause for a second, but I don’t need to think. I kneel to the ground and put my arms out. He comes to me. His teeth sink into my shoulder. I hold him tight.
King of Tokyo: Home Expansion
by Katie Manning
“In King of Tokyo, you play mutant monsters, gigantic robots, and strange aliens—all of whom are destroying Tokyo and whacking each other in order to become the one and only King of Tokyo.”
—Board Game Geek
Don’t let my face
fool you—its smile
cute as a baby bunny
in a pink robot suit.
I’ve got claws.
And you—
I can turn you so
suddenly from loved
spouse to villain lizard,
alien, or ape.
I can make you
my monster.
We wear each other
down, tear metal
arms and extra heads
away until we find
a human heart
or two, unleash
some better version
of ourselves.
Eldritch Horror
by Katie Manning
“Across the globe, ancient evil is stirring. Now, you and your trusted circle of colleagues must travel around the world, working against all odds to hold back the approaching horror.”
—Board Game Geek
We hit the card
that makes us lose
half of everything:
half of our items,
spells, & clue tokens
tossed into the box.
I watch you decide
which spell to lose.
Your forehead wrinkles
remind me of our
newborn boys—
the lines easier to see
now that you’ve lost
all of your hair.
It’s been two months
since you lost half
of your testicles
and half of your
tumors. It’s been
seven weeks of
chemicals in your
blood. You roll
the dice to cast
the spell you
chose to keep.
You only need
one success.
The Captive
by Ellen Huang
here
come
the
tendrils of thoughts
again. touch them------and dreams dissolve.
unnatural, keep out, ashes and masks
doesn't the name taste bitter in your mouth?
act natural? what is natural anymore?
love is said loosely, i guarantee its mortality.
yet you insist on loving me.
companions are but strangers with names.
yet i know i see you
it will never be enough. yet you reach out for me alone.
you will turn, you will betray,
torn to pieces from every side.
black ink dark storms invisible electricity
i can tear you down to anything,
phantoms seize me in imagination.
aren't you afraid?
the name is sweet on my lips.
aren't you afraid?
embrace. an embrace.
aren't you a—?
be still.
The In-Betweeners
by Lynn White
We are the In-Betweeners
gathered round the fire.
The flames will cleanse,
they said,
purify,
make you fit
to fly.
And you can watch
the ones below
flickering
dancing
flaring
alight,
a living fire
of the impure dead.
Gather round!
Listen to them
as they crackle
and scream.
It’s only hot enough here
to purify,
they said,
but it’s still too warm
much too warm
hot as hell it seems.
Only enough to purify,
they said
hell is hotter,
surely not.
So here we are,
the In-Betweeners
too warm
but still
not feeding the flames.
They say there’s a heaven
that the pure can reach
when they grow wings
and fly above the flames
but how can they?
It’s too warm
for wings
not to singe
not to frazzle
surely.
So gather round,
it’s here we’ll stay
too warm
but not in flames
and careful not to fall
below.
JerK
by Penina Finger
Oh Death, I don’t like you today
and can’t abide by all that nonsense
about your birdlike grace,
swooping like a darkwinged owl
to snuff a breath and cradle souls away.
You’re a boor, rude and self-absorbed,
overdressed and loud—
abruptly pulling guests by their elbows from the room
as if yours are the most important needs.
You swing your boorish arms while you pretentiously quote poetry,
knocking people’s drinks from their hands.
I don’t buy the stories
that you’re cordial, but misunderstood,
“just doing your job,”
a guileless instrument of fate.
Unlike the folks you interrupt and shush,
you have nothing new or interesting to say.
It’s always the same,
and I had plans.
Summer Branching
by Penina Finger
While I read a book on the couch last night,
a part of me went out into the cool dark and sat on the curb.