Happy Halloween!

 

HAPPY HALLOWEEN!

The Calling / Sugar Snakes by Stephen Jarrell Williams

The Calling

His cold hands

carrying flowers

upon the path

along the cliffs

up to the main peak

overlooking the sea

continual winds

he remembers yesterdays

sitting the flowers down

beside a handmade cross

bent by the years

when memories become alive

he senses her

loving presence

tears forming

rolling slowly down

with the far below

rush of the sea

he swallows hard

wondering if he should jump

but her voice comes

softly

Someday

We'll be together again 

her words

keeping his soul

and heart warm.

Sugar Snakes

Halloween candy

millions chewing

mouthfuls of stories

masks covering

grinning

sugar snakes.

Stephen Jarrell Williams writes at night, waking from his dreams, before they consume him.  He can be found @papapoet on Twitter X.

Beneath the Shadows / Loneliness Motel by Michael Keshigian

Beneath the Shadows

Blades of grass and wildflowers,

we scribe,

forever in the shadows

of great white pines and giant sequoias,

hovering hundreds of feet overhead.

Their literary majesty

dominates the garden

of earthly expression

though plants among us

occasionally reflect beauty so pure

to demand notice

for momentary flower

and sweet aroma.

As fleeting specters,

our distinction temporarily adorns

the abundant landscape,

though ultimately withers,

scattering throughout

the forest of memory

into the realm of lost paths

and uninhabited caves,

where with sun’s gentle grace

and fertile soil,

another seed may blossom

to deliver a sensuous

if not abbreviated message.

Loneliness Motel

 

His little hole in the Boston skyline,

one window lined with soot

facing an alley

behind Fenway Park

where he swore the ghosts 

played at midnight. 

In the room overhead,

there was a clarinet

that stalked Stravinsky’s Three Pieces

every evening.

During the day it was mostly quiet,

the crowd on the sidewalks

resembled the spiders in the room,

preying with thick overcoats

to catch the unsuspecting

in a web woven with smog

dimly illuminated with the little light

that penetrated that same alley,

so dark, he could only shave

with a lamp in his face.

Every morning at 7:30 A.M.,

students clamored on the staircase,

rushing en route to classes

at the universities

and colleges around the corner,

the clarinet player would flush the toilet

then turn on the shower.

Once in a while, a bird

chirped or tweeted, like a bell chime,

so close to his door,

for a moment, he believed

he had a visitor.

 

Michael Keshigian has recently been published in The California Quarterly, Chiron Review, San Pedro River Review, and Panoply as well as many other national and international journals.  He is the author of 14 poetry collections and has been nominated 7 times for a Pushcart prize and 3 times for Best of the Net.

A Man Returns to the Scene of Where it Happened / The Walls Speak by John Grey

 A Man Returns to the Scene of Where it Happened

A scream. 

He must have heard it.

Waves of anguish ripple through

a sky hemorrhaging orange. 

 

He, mouth gritted, 

clasps hands around

an invisible throat.

 

She is unseen but felt,

a roar in the wind, 

a shudder in the boards 

beneath his feet.

 

Does the scream fade?

Or echo endlessly going forward?

 

The bridge snaps

like the bones of a neck.

with or without his footsteps.

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Walls Speak

 

The walls make noise.

It’s not mice.

Since when do those creatures

whisper in perfect English?

And I’ve never come across 

a rodent yet

that spoke to me by name.

 

Mere rustling 

wouldn’t bother me.

Nor the occasional scamper

across the kitchen floor

in search of crumbs.

I can lay traps.

I can bait the nooks with poison.

 

But how do you trap the past?

How do you poison a memory?

When it’s the past that traps me?

And my memory is poison?

 

The walls keep repeating,

“I can’t forgive what you have done to me.”

They’re not referring to the cheap wall-paper.

More likely the bloodstains 

that pattern is pasted over.

 

 

 

John Grey is an Australian poet, US resident, recently published in Shift, River And South and Flights. Latest books, “Bittersweet”, “Subject Matters” and “Between Two Fires” are available through Amazon. Work upcoming in Rush, Spotlong Review and Trampoline.

Shadow Walker by Michael Lee Johnson

I walked into a shadow.
I found my mother there.
Age is no longer a factor.
Though memory leaves a feeling of 98.5 years.
But what do shadows, dreams,
and what fairies in the dust have in common?
She's no longer suffering from macular degeneration.
I can still see her as a 78-year-old son now.
But I'm not on Earth either, at least for now.
I follow her love and acceptance, her compassion.
But no human here is without the need of angels,
mother told me.
So, I must return, for now, a seeker of shadows.
On Earth, a confused poet in a jungle of branches.

Michael Lee Johnson lived in Canada for ten years during the Vietnam era. Today, he is a poet in the greater Chicago-land area, IL. He has 354-plus YouTube poetry videos. Michael Lee Johnson is an internationally published poet in 46 countries, a song lyricist with several published poetry books, and a nominee for 7 Pushcart Prize awards and 7 Best of the Net nominations. 

The Cold Earth by Nathan Sweem

I met a woman in the wilderness
Crouched beside a fire,
Tearing off bits of rope
And throwing them into the pit.

I asked, "What are you burning, and Why?"

She said, "I am burning time,
Because I like to watch it burn."
It was the string of her years,
And she did not blink
As curling tongues
Devoured her days,
But she kept on feeding it.

The flame in her eyes
Was the flame in mine;
She was a reflection of myself,
And I would not look away.

When the final ember
Crumbled to ash,
She was remiss,
Because she had nothing left
To burn.

The darkness took her,
And I was alone.

The night tore at my vision,
Shadows howling at the cold earth,
As I wandered.

And I wandered

Nathan Sweem writes fiction, creative nonfiction, and poetry from his home in Southern Oregon. Connect with him on social media @nathan_sweem

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.