In the Black and White World by Marianne Szlyk

The last owl hoots, the last
coyote howls, someone’s

lost cat cannot help but
squeak.  This blackened tree,
a clean tooth, juts out at
the sky.  Branches are smoke,
are ash, dangling, blacker
than sky at city’s edge.
Bugs trill and click; moonlight
glistens the far foothills
soon to be someone’s home
but now as empty as
a picture drawn in chalk.

Marianne Szlyk is a professor at Montgomery College. Her poems have also appeared in of/with, bird's thumb, Bourgeon, and Nixes' Mate. Her books include I Dream of Empathy and On the Other Side of the Window.  Recently, she and her husband were part of Pony One Dog Press' reading at the New York City Poetry Festival.  Pony One Dog Press will be publishing her next book, Poetry in Plein-Air, soon.

The Snow by Jan Darrow

Matthew was buying roses for his dead wife when he met Sylvie in a flower shop.  They started a conversation that carried over into Starbucks and soon she carried her belongings into his large house outside of the city.  It was something alright, 6,000 square feet of luxurious rooms surrounded by a formal garden.

Sylvie was a bohemian.

 

Matthew’s dead wife was Elaine.  The house had been hers.  She was rich.  She liked order and formality. Matthew grieved for her, but what he didn’t know was he was about to be served with divorce papers. It seems Elaine had a boyfriend, but luckily, she died.

After Sylvie moved in, she bought a flock of ponies.  They enjoyed the garden and ate everything formal they could find.  So, Sylvie planted vegetables - tomatoes, zucchini, beans, corn and sunflowers.  When she finished, she put up wire fencing.

Inside, Sylvie rearranged furniture, stacked pillows on floors, lit incense and burned lavender candles.  She liked to call it - casual formal.

And Matthew was ok with everything "Sylvie" because for the first time in a while he was having fun.

  

One late summer weekend Sylvie invited a few friends and a Ouija board over.  Oh, and a spiritualist who pretty much looked like everyone else except she had shiny silver hair.  Before it got dark, wine was served and so were some vegetarian veggies. Then the lavender candles were lit.

 

The Ouija board had a mind of its own.  Matthew knew who was spewing letters out one by one and it scared him.  His dead wife was communicating, and a couple of things were very clear – she didn’t like the vegetable garden or the ponies.

The next day the ponies were herded away.

   

When autumn came, the big house grew cold and dismal. Matthew was nervous and distant. 

One evening in December Sylvie stood in the dark living room looking out into the garden when something caught her eye.  Snow swirled down against the lights. As she drew closer a face looked up at her through the window.  It was a woman’s face hideous and raw with a wide gaping mouth and flesh the color of bone.

 

Sylvie reeled in horror and ran out of the room only to find Matthew in the hall.  She begged him to go – leave the miserable house for the holidays.  And why not?  She hadn’t given up her apartment in the city.  They could go there.

A little while later Matthew put their suitcases and holiday boxes in the car.  He closed the door and lit a cigarette.

  

Sylvie was inside gathering up the last of the gifts in the hall when she noticed the door at the end ajar.  She walked cautiously toward it.  There was no sound coming from the darkness beyond and she opened it wide and stepped outside.  The snow was falling heavy now and it was deep and beautiful.

The car was ready to go. Matthew couldn’t find Sylvie anywhere.  He called her name upstairs and down and finally stepped into the hall.  Snow was swirling in through the open door and piling up on the carpet, so he closed it.

He found Sylvie two days later when they came to clear the walk.

  

On Valentine’s Day Matthew was buying roses for his dead wives when he met Ava in a flower shop.

Jan Darrow is a poet from Michigan who connected with the natural world at an early age.  She has been published online and in print and finds abandoned places utterly beautiful.  You can see more of her work at jandarrow.blogspot.com.

Macabre Artist by Atlas Rourke

I imagine Van Rymsdyk with music

the ripe swellings of the orchestra

swirling through the air with

the dust of his chalks.

The room is heavy

with the expression of his art

as he leans over the corpse

before him.

The holy body, he knows

is a medical one

before him, the mystery is laid bare

the gravid uterus

set neatly on the table

on his paper

the real and the idealized

both existing under his hand

under his eyes

his gristly muse,

this mess, this mass.

Occasionally he shifts,

hoping to catch the morning sun

streaming in, choked with motes

he needs this light

this fragmentation,

the bits of mother

remaining around the infant,

narrative displacement.

Even though the light is dim

his eyes have trouble adjusting.

Atlas Rourke is a historian and writer living in New England.

Hitchcock Presents a Salve by Yash Seyedbagheri

Big sister Nancy and I love Alfred Hitchcock Presents. We retreat into black-and-white and each other.

Suppressed stupidity unfurls onscreen. Daughters kill controlling fathers. Sons turn in their fathers for financial gain. Frustration expresses itself. People seize power.

Mother and Dad exchange clipped words over starched smiles. Kitchen’s not clean. Dad has a lot of “late night” engagements. They blame each other for our faults. Nancy’s too hot-tempered, Nick’s a dreamer.

They never break up.

We wish they’d have affairs with younger people. Scam each other. Grab. Scream.

Nancy and I laugh, thinking of it. Turn back to Hitchcock.

Violent relief.

Yash Seyedbagheri is a graduate of Colorado State University's MFA program in fiction.  A native of Boise, Idaho, his work is forthcoming or has been published in journals such as Unstamatic, Door Is A Jar Magazine, Maudlin House, and Ariel Chart. Yash lives in Garden Valley, Idaho.

Darkened Forest by Mike Turner

Shadows of darkened forest

Shade my waking mind

Deepening dank gloom

of despair

Drawn from knife-edged ridge

I descend into gulley below

Stagnant droplets fall from dead branches

as I brush past

Sinking deeper and deeper into the abyss

Dying ferns rise like wraiths above me

Blotting out wan sun

As fog begins to hover

Like a specter, haunting

Until at last I reach a dead, mossy glade

Cold like pinpricks ‘neath layers of flesh

Rash of goose pimples on bare skin

Raise of fine hairs on back of neck

As I realize that Hell is not a fiery lake

Nor simmering brimstone

But a moldy, mildewed bog

Silent

But for screams of terror

As I realize

I shall not awake

Mike Turner is a songwriter and poet living on the U.S. Gulf Coast. His original songs have received radio play in the U.S., UK and Europe. His poems have been published in Spillwords Press, GreyThoughts and Red Planet Magazine.

In the White Room by Sandy Hiss

innocence peacefully sleeps
wrapped snuggly inside the petals
of a magnolia tree.  Scent of sweetness
permeates the air, translucent clouds
that soak up the grey rain of time.

In the corner, a young girl poses
for the cover of Muse magazine.
Legs crossed, shoulders pert
cutting out paperdolls from the wings
of opal moths.  Every doll is a clone,
porcelain skin, Geisha lips, and
onyx eyes that close when the moon appears.

She knows the language of darkness.  
Studied it silently through violet glasses.
How it seduced her mother and drove her
father insane.  She can still hear his howls
and how they shocked the hairs on her arms.

So she stays within the light,
locking all doors to the outside.  
Her heart, a pearl unblemished.



*Published in The Literary Burlesque, Fall 2010




Sandy Hiss writes poetry & fiction, sometimes dark, magical, or mysterious.  Her fondest memories of childhood are from her years in Germany, playing in the vast woods behind her home which contributed to her lifelong love of fairy tales, magical realism, and the paranormal. Sandy currently resides in Southern California with her husband and two children. 

Night Dread by Michael Keshigian

He dreaded the evening respite,

desperate to sleep yet reluctant to surrender.

Unable to relax, the muscles in his body twitched,

bones creaked as he tossed side to side,

at times bolting upright in panic.

He fantasized the need for someone

to douse his face with sand,

blur his eyes to their wild wandering

out the window, into the dark

where his mind staggered in and out of consciousness,

rising then falling

under the weight of the midnight sky.

The stars blinked incessantly

and the clouds, in enormously detailed grayness,

played an all night game with the moon.

Through early morning the nightmare failed to yield.

If he could only rid the sky

of the moon and clouds,

spot paint the stars black,

his brain might cease its wander

through the gardens of life,

his ghastly gaze at flowering circumstances

that bewildered him.

And then there were the dead,

memories of those

who once tended the bloom,

their shadowed faces withered

upon the stems

along narrow paths of past reality,

making the journey unbearable

even as he pleaded

with the pallbearers of slumber

to rise from the vacant darkness

and carry off the dead weight of his insomnia

in an empty coffin.

Michael Keshigian’s thirteenth poetry collection, The Garden Of Summer was released April, 2019 by Flutter Press. He has been widely published in numerous national and international journals, recently including Red River Review, Sierra Nevada Review, Oyez Review, Bluepepper, Muddy River Review, Smoky Quartz and has appeared as feature writer in over twenty publications with 7 Pushcart Prize and 2 Best Of The Net nominations. (michaelkeshigian.com)