On Actaeon / The Caveat Emptorium by Pixie Bruner

On Actaeon

If you speak a single word of what
you have seen, here at this indigo pool,
of your shame and of your threat on my integrity-
where strange croci, narcissi, and laurels
the butterflies and damselflies
pavane gracefully upon the opalescent tide line,
Oh fool, oh silly prideful idiot,
a fading humanoid with lanky hair
who relished blood so greatly,
sang copious incomprehensible odes
and hunted your prey until they broke
like waves on our incarnadine sands,
you will transform
and assume a new true form.
This is my world. Actaeon, you fool,
Have you the remembrance of a koi?
You call for your lapdogs,
hounds of sychopantic love,
Your ever-loyal band
of man’s best misanthropes.
Names become an undoing as
you invoke the words of your own curse,
As a stag, you are mute, cowering,
you smell of strange worlds and laboratories,
Sorrowful are nymphs and hamadryads
Shattered glass of crystalline grief,
spun sugar in drizzling mist-
the native woodland creatures who observe
the fufillment of prophecy-
fleeing from consequence
their ragged dagger teeth tear in your flesh.
you fall prey to your hubris,
so tragically true to form.




The Caveat Emptorium

The Caveat Emptorium sells everything you ever possibly need and want for a price.
Everything under the sun and moon,
even replacement parts. I sought a new part.
My heart broken and my dreams killed.
My heart pulled into cosmic taffy,
It tasted like a Hieronymous Bosch berry and bittersweet and too sticky,
boiled in acid in a dutch oven full of righteous anger tears,
shattered once it reached the hard crack stage on the candy thermometer,
and fed to the monsters that live in
nice gated subdivisions who vomited it right up.
I sobbed for my dead heart, turned into unwanted sweets.
My countless tears became diamonds that half filled a Crown Royal bag.
I handed them over to a constantly changing man,
— he wore a different body and face every time I saw him
but the shabby trench coat with pockets full of wonders ever remained the same.
The Caveat Emptorium is in an alleyway behind a coffeehouse
and opens promptly 3:13 pm every other Tuesday.
But never the same alleyway or coffeeshop as before.
Never the same door and never when you seek it.
The proprietor is always at the door, it chimes without fail.
It appears on gloomy unseasonable days when it’s drizzling out.
Exchange those precious tears for a new heart
—of pure gold or something better.
I traded for a new one of an unbreakable alloy with strange properties,
opted for all the the features but the extended warranty.
The seller popped it into the fairy door in my sternum.
Bluebirds, bats, and pied magpies flew out when the ribcage door opened.
Free at last. Free at last. Thank god almighty, free at last.
My dreams… they remain lost.
I can’t afford to replace them,
so I am now saving up my blood sugared rubies, cold moonstone sweats,
but am holding onto my soul for the rainy Tuesday
I find that back alley charity shop,
that strange Rumplestiltskin of miracles again

Pixie Bruner (HWA/SFPA) is a poet, editor, and cancer survivor. She lives in Atlanta, GA, with her Doppelgänger. Her debut The Body As Haunted (Authortunities Press) was Elgin nominated. Her words are in Amazing Stories, Strange Horizons, Space & Time Magazine, Hotel Macabre Vol 1 (Crystal Lake Publishing), Weird Fiction Quarterly, and more. She wrote for White Wolf Gaming Studio. Werespiders ruining LARPs are her fault. 2025 Kay Snow Award winner, and Rhysling Award Chair.