Happy Halloween – October 28, 2019 Weekly
This week the vampires, grendels, nightmares, and spirits come out to play. (Yes, we even have pachyderm ghosts.) With All Hallows’ Eve nigh, we take you to a darker place between wakeful stillness and bothered slumber. Let your mind drift to that doe rotting on the side of the road. Consider the ancestor spirits twisting in the trees. And spare a thought for past matriarchs. All are still near, and we, at least, never forget.
"Between Wakeful Stillness and Bothered Slumber" by Sophie Kearing
“I am not going to run to some spiritualist hack just because my daughter’s having a rough patch.”
“A rough patch? Margaret, it’s been six months! How long are you gonna let the poor girl suffer?”
"A Darker Place" by Kenneth L. A. Lineberger
A grendel. But here? Nobody had heard of one outside Germany in centuries. They could pass in human society, but weren’t known to. Her thoughts turned to the graduate students, she needed to find them. Fast.
"To the doe, rotting" by Tianna G. Hansen
a once-vibrant thing reduced to fur and
dead eyes on the side of country roads;
scraps to be eaten, a meal for the birds
circling above. all I can think as I pass
is how this is the way I have been left,
"Until They Are Well Done" by Juliet Cook and j/j hastain
Dripping specters with celestial organs
who might be sinners or saints or
self-created spirits. The wings that emerge
from inside you shoot out cataclysmic
meteor-like orgasms better than any catechism
taught in old-fashioned Sunday school class.
"Relevant Elephant" by Pax Morrigan
Picture yourself on a stroll in the morning when
Tusking and trunkated forces alight
Perch on your shoulder like muses of prompting and
Toot in your eardrum with all of their might