William Peacock TRICK OR TREAT

Trick or Treat
Children screech
Witches, gouls and
Vampires meet,

Out in the dark
They wander around
Casting spells on
People earth bound,

Halloween parties
For our little smarties
Dressing up and jumping about
Come join in our fun
“ they shout”.

Gone is the night
With daylight so bright
Then all is well
with nothing to fear
Halloween’s over
for another year.

William Peacock is an anonymous contributor who transmogrified into our transom yesterday, and into a rare Saturday du Jour today. Where his ink energy will be tomorrow, other than the ether, only the Great Pumpkin knows…

S.R. Christian THREE POEMS

THE MOONLIGHT DANSEUSE

The bedroom is dark,
A swirl of violets, crimsons,
Of blues of deepest midnight.

In the corner, a music box chimes,
In sadness, lamenting that which has been lost.
Its dancer twirls in an everlasting circle,
Everlasting… everlasting… everlasting…

The silk blinds bellow about in the wind,
The open window, high as the ceiling,
Agape, open for someone to come home,
For someone lost, but where? Where could that someone be?

In the center, a four poster bed,
Its drapes are royal violet, its frame beautiful sturdy oak.
Heavy blankets of blue, feather pillows of white,
White like the stars,
Lost stars.

Perfume drifts amidst the wind,
A whisper – nay, a kiss,
Of lavender, of roses,
Of innocence,
Of death.

Wooden floorboards stay silent,
In mourning that they will never creak under her toes again.
Canvases, rich in oily pastels, are shadowed, solemn,
In the silence they do not break.

A ray of moonlight knife’s its way through the silky white curtains,
As one, curtains and moonlight, they dance as though they have danced for eternity.

Books lay on a nearby table,
Each buried by the one on top,
One is still open, pleading for attention.
It is a diary,
It’s ink is slightly wet and smeared,
As though it has been crying its tears of ink.

A lone candle, dwindling to an inch from its own departure,
Graces light onto an empty chair.
Forever empty,
Light forever graceful until the end.

In the closet there are clothes,
The clothes of a child girl.
Dolls and shoes,
(Impossibly small shoes –
Surely, no human could fit such delicate, such petite wear?)
And dresses with bows.
One dress is missing from its hanger;
It will never hang there anymore.

It is a beautiful room,
The cotton dresses, the fine draperies,
The tomes, the furniture, the window…

All shrouded, all painted in night’s suffocating hue.
The hue of Death.

Still, the dancers spin,
Twirl and step in perfect flow,
Elegance a melody of two lovers entwined…

To and fro,
To and fro,
Everlasting…everlasting…everlasting…

But look,
There, in the midst of the shifting curtains and moonlight,
A shape… a form… a dancing girl…

The curtains flutter in the breeze,
Caressing this new – no, this found, dweller,
The frail silhouette of this little girl.

But if she is solid in this form,
The moonlight does not reveal,
Yes, for within the white folds the girl twirls, spins and steps,
But she is only as solid as the midnight air.

The girl is not there, then,
At least, not physically.
Even ghosts must find their way home,
And she has.

The perfume, the diary…
The chair, the lit candle…

She has returned.

DON’T CLOSE DOWN THE NIGHT

I see those beastie, crawly dwellings,
I see those musty, rusted mattresses,
I see those creepy nests of late dreams,
I see those gothic buttresses.

Don’t close down the night.

I feel those wispy whispering wings,
I feel those slicing, sliding, dragging claws,
I feel those slimy, slick tentalia,
I feel those gripping tightly – wildly frightening! – biting jaws.

Don’t close down the night.

I hear the brandished whips on horses,
I hear the pat, pat, pattering of paws,
I think I hear the howls approaching,
I hear the phantom’s eerie drawls.

Don’t close down the night

I smell the putrid scent of earth,
I smell the tingy trout of fear,
I smell, I smell, the sulphur of hell,
I smell its foul breath ever near.

Don’t close down the night…

I sense the restless beastie’s heart.
I sense hound’s presence near and far,
I sense a calm of a stalker’s leer,
I sense the chill down spine so dark.

Don’t close down the night…

I taste a trace of sickly sweet,
I taste a virgin on scraped knees,
I taste a tongue curling along my own,
I taste the breath of the devious fiend.

Don’t close down the night…

Succubi and wendigos;
lichen; daemon; fiends…
Owls and bengals; gladiolus, lilies;
the night of wishes free.

I see the nest, the nest of dreams,
I hear the cackle of the witch’s screams,
I know the crow of devious deed,
I wish for its sweetness to envelop me,

So please,

Oh please,

Don’t close down the night.

BONE COLLECTOR

Lo! Come, observe the chill,
The creak among the bones,
They are white and bleached and polished,
Have been lent to build me throne.

The air down here is dank, is damp,
It’s frightful in its light,
Blessed then be the man who dares,
To near it in the night.

Walls of bars, o’ stony cells,
Where cries of the dead be echoed.
Ages pass and dust collects,
Still the ghosts do heckle.

Why, I once spied, under disguise,
The life within these dungeons,
For the bones speak much, if ye care to trust,
In thieves, in cowards, in bludgeons.

Murder, vengeance, theft, and rape,
Crimes the civil must shun.
All collected in their glorious state,
As the lowest fall, ‘ere be one by one.

Amidst the chill of this deathly place,
Is a sweetened whiff of rot,
Decay and shame, all is vain;
In time, their bones be got.

And so I come, with thee name of none,
In a cloak of dearest ebony.
With a prayer for the damned, I take hold their hand,
And take them away with me.

Some claim to sightings of ghosts, of men,
Of those who walk in bones.
They shall rest assured that I’ll be back,
To add to me glorious throne.

So good of night, I bid thee flight,
May you live life in your faith,
Lest you end your end in these dungeons,
Where for you, too, I’ll pray.

S.R. Christian is an emerging author who resides within the prairies of Canada, where he lives with his dog, known to some as Ghost Wolf.

David Hughes THE MOON AND RONALD

THE MOON AND RONALD

David Hughes

Fridge? Closed. Oven? Yes—tick, tick, tick; tick, tick, tick. Off. Hot water and central heating? Just take a step and crane my neck—yes. All off. Good.

Kettle? Christ, the kettle of all things! Yes, thought so: off at the switch and unplugged. Come on now! I really haven’t got time to mess about like this. It’s not even half an hour to the change, judging from the light. And when that bad moon starts to rise—well—all I’ll say is it’ll be too late then, that’s all. Now come on Ronald, you’ve done the kitchen. No, don’t look over at the thermostat again; you’ve done it; you know it’s off. All right, damnit!

Bedroom-cum-office next. We’re going to be lucky to check everything at this rate. And it bloody well needs doing before—Oh bloody hell! Look at that cobweb on top of the door. I’ll—just—get—it. No, it needs the tickling stick to do it properly. If I just—No, there isn’t time now! Just—make a time to do it, and sodding well stick to it this time. If you’re not going to dust for weeks on end, this is what’s going to happen: you’re going to end up having to do a big clean. Yes, yes, all right! Jesus, I so don’t have time for the lecture right now.

Okay, quickly now. Radio? Off and unplugged; plug and flex hanging over the bottom of the bedside table? (Not trailing on the floor in all that—dust! Oh, sweet Jesus!) Yep. Okay. That’s okay. Everything else in its place? Well, that bank statement doesn’t want to be on that pile, does it? Don’t know what on earth possessed you to—Right, that’s better.

Blind? Slats angled just so? Top window? Just reach through the small gap in the blind—always irritates me, the way it clatters—and push it. Push again. And again. Definitely clicked shut. Just check it again—push. Yep. (In any case, I’ll be sure to check it one last time, just quickly as I come through here on the way out.) Ronald, for God’s sake, this over-checking means you won’t get round to everything you need to check before—All right, for God’s sake is right!

Computer? Still on—but then I wanted it to be. (At least something’s going to plan this evening.) I really want to check my emails again before the night kicks off. I’m waiting for that one from—well, it doesn’t matter who from—but I won’t have another chance before tomorrow—at the earliest.

Now, shall I check the bathroom and the doors first, or the emails? I can feel the change just beginning: muscles and tissue under the skin in my hands, swelling. Ever so slightly at first, but it won’t be long. Bugger! I’d better do the emails first. I mean, you need pretty normal fingers to do all the turning off and unplugging and so on, but email! No, there’s no way you can do that even a fraction of the way to having claws.

It’s just—well—I have tried it before when the change was well underway but I really wanted to send a quick reply; and the phrase ‘more trouble than it’s worth’ could have been invented for just that situation: dialog boxes popping up left, right and centre, asking me if I wanted to change the keyboard command settings. And then, of course, I tried to tell it no, and—well—you know the rest. It was pure bad luck I ended up forwarding my query on the price for those special blue pills to my entire address book. No, it still brings back painful memories.

I must do this quickly. Okay. Launch email, then—Oh no, the heating and hot water control! Now do I remember checking them? No, it’s no good: I can’t. I probably did, but I don’t actually remember looking at them and thinking Off—off. Not tonight.

Blast! I push the chair back from the desk so quickly it hits the end of the bed with a crack, and I’m back through, into the kitchen, round the fridge—quick, slight pressure on the door—yes, still shut—and eyeballing the control on the wall in the corner. Yes, of course you’ve bloody done it! Now, now I remember checking it several times. Why do you remember now? Why not before, when it might have been some use? I can feel a slight sweat pricking out that goes nicely with the panicky, tingling feeling in my stomach and in my hands and feet. I get so angry with myself for being like this—so frustrated.

I reckon I’ve just got time to look at the email now, even if I can’t respond. I march through into the bedroom, heading straight for the computer. With my rapidly heightening senses, I feel it before it actually rings—SOD!—and carry on, without stopping, through the doorway into the living room to pick up the phone just as the bell starts.

Of course, I fumble it. I won’t say my hands are anything like paws yet, but the change is well underway. I manage to pick the receiver up by tucking it between my hands. Time is so short now; I just don’t need this. And then a voice with a slight speech impediment says: ‘Mr Cholmondley? Good evening. Just a quick courtesy call about disability. Do you have trouble getting into the bath?’

The growl erupting spontaneously from my stomach puts paid to this particular caller without further ado: click, buzz, and I drop the receiver back in its cradle. Thankfully, it goes back on its hook all right. That’s the second time today an unwanted call has completely broken my rhythm. The first time I’d just finished ironing my shirts for next week, thinking what a nice job I’d made of them, and how much I like that peach-coloured one, and out of the blue some guy’s telling me that if I’m prepared to sign up today only I can get free weekend calls for a year.

Shaking my head sadly, I pad back to the bedroom. Cramps and bogglings all over my body now; but mentally I’m still almost totally human. Then I see the moon through the blind’s slats as I pass through the doorway. For a long moment I stand there, utterly transfixed by its beauty and eloquence. I know—can feel—I’ve got a very few minutes left at best.  Bloody typical! And you still haven’t checked the taps in the bathroom or the shower on-off cord.

I feel a surge of huge irritation as I hit the keyboard to get rid of the screensaver. What’s this? Grey box. Oh no! This terminal is in use and has been locked. Please contact your system administrator. Again, the growl, mounting to a roar this time; that finely balanced moment where man becomes wolf, and in the process takes a powerful swipe, sweeping the monitor off the desk and onto the floor where the ominous sounds and blue-orange flash make the inner man blanch and shut his eyes tight with thoughts of the expense and inconvenience. How many more times?

Out; out now; into the night for wolfly diggings. Luckily I’ve already put the key in its special place outside for when it’s all over. That and getting the ironing done—the only sensible moves all day.

The door slams to, locking itself as I sniff the air deeply, scenting my first prey: a fox in the woods beyond the last of the isolated bungalows. Nearly all wolf now—a different species. Nearly all. A tremendous exhilarating thrill of liberation from the tedious little worries of the everyday human existence. And then—

Oh, Christ! Did I turn the bloody iron off?

DM Fiction Editor and European Bureau Chief David Hughes was born in Nairobi. After studying French at London University, he worked as a language teacher, then as a clerk, and communications officer for an insurance company. He now lives in Essex, England, working part time for a housing association. David has placed work with British humour magazine Viz, had a short story broadcast on BBC radio, and others published in Whortleberry Press anthologies. A ghost story is due to be recorded by Sniplits in the near future.

READ MORE OF DAVID’S WORK IN DM ~ L ~

J. Rodney Karr THREE POEMS

FIRST CHILDHOOD DREAM

Windows balance
like wounds.
Moon-clouds
touch me. Innocuous
stars are written, written,
they become prayers.

Sleep is a wound.
The door opens as light
sucks the dark hall.
A hand reaches out
as tiny as a sapling,
as pale as infection.

Over my oaken crib
is a caducean sword.
Cherubic sleep floats
my second self toward
kitchen light, the crowded
family table, midnight,
Grandmother’s hand
in a sink full of knives,
the slit difficult to see,
the white nerve
the width of the palm.

It is then
I enter the fairy tale
holding three talisman:
poultice, hatchet, whistle.
Touching my wounds,
I learn home is the body.
Touching the blade,
I remember my flesh.

Slipping through intolerable
rings of sleep, song becomes
body, body mind, mind pain.

HULA DANCING IN MONDO CANE

These tourists are dead now. Now
in celluloid they’re kissed, lei-ed,
and hoping the grass skirts split
to show some ass. Even the women

want gossip. The dancers are paid,
of course. Exotica is to deny:
Ladies and gentlemen, all Hawaiian
words end with vowels. Hi is bye.

Learn aloha, poi, ukulele, and hula
saved this girl’s limbs shrunk by polio.
They’re touched, and, as written
in the program, they move their bright

butts in blue rayon. Later the men want
gratification from their wives who want
love but write in journals about volcano
tours, lava black and hard, a souvenir.

HOSTAGE

You are being held hostage in camera sight,
gun sight, open city space, concrete shapes,
hot shadows, a gun under your brain pan,
a chain around your neck, each link leading
to his wrist and arm, his cap and crotch,
cameras on, you may die, hold on, police
squads, negotiations, helicopters, burning
city afternoon, hold on, sharpshooters, guns,
bullets cool in the chambers, survive, think
home, laundry, silverware, trash, stains, skull,
brain on your face, in your long sweaty hair,
cameras rolling, police swarming, grabbed,
held in strangers’ arms, interrogated
by strangers’ words, held, as readers to poems,
held, and life continues, if it can continue,
if the trauma isn’t visceral, if you can sob,
painfully, in another’s arms, child-like, shamed,
held in the hot city of who you are. Hold on.
You are alive.

J. Rodney Karr has been published in The Iowa Review, Poet Lore, and The South Carolina Review, among others. He lives and teaches in Denmark.

Daniel Chacón BETWEEN THE TREES

BETWEEN THE TREES

Daniel Chacón

The man picked up a stick and stuck the pointed end into the mud and drew an image of his lover’s face.

It must not have been that good, because when he pointed at the indentions in the dirt, the curves, the round dish-shape that looked a little (he thought) like the shape of her skull, and then pointed at her, she didn’t understand. She stared at it, and he kept pointing at it and then at her and nodding his head as if to say they were the same, but she shrugged her shoulders. She didn’t understand. She took some of the dirt on the tips of her fingers and tasted it, and then she spit it out.

It wasn’t until much later, equipped with language, that he stuck a pen into a bottle of ink and wrote the second draft. His lover, standing near the doorway, was pouring a cup of steaming water. The sun slanted through the window and lit her up. She wore a red robe, and her lips concentrated on pouring the hot water into a clay cup.

He was so moved by her image—and there were peach trees outside, pink flowers newly blooming, and he could smell them. He wrote about her, trying to capture her.

The second draft turned out to be nothing like he had set out to achieve.

Somehow the peach tree pushed her from the center frame of his syntax, so that she was only a small dot on the bottom corner of the page, and when he read it aloud to her, she recognized the peach tree and the smells, because he merely said the words “smelled like,” but she had no idea what that dark dot at the bottom corner of the page was supposed to be.

Later, he hired actors to say words on stage, and they wore masks that expressed the emotions that, to him, made his lover so beautiful. For the first time he added drama, that is, a story, but the real reason for the work was the beauty of her face. It would be delivered through a tale, a face that could launch a thousand ideas. The story was an excuse for the image. Her spirit was in the language, sliding in and out of the curve of words, her sex wetting every sentence, tingling the curve of every comma, or so he wanted to believe.

He thought he had captured her so elegantly, but after the play was over and the people went home and masks and swords were hung in dark closets where moonlight leaked in from the beamed roofs, she sat waiting for him in the theater. He stood on the stage and held out his arms like a tree and said, Well? What did you think?

Nice, she said, but it was clear she didn’t recognize herself.

Then she picked up a pen, and as he tried to capture her, she tried too, and they were on opposite sides of the house, both writing about her, and while he continued to write about what was visible about her and what she meant to him, she found that she was able to discover parts of herself that had been hidden away. When she read her first draft aloud, her voice cracking with emotion, he recognized her immediately. It occurred to him that he should be writing less about her and try to write about himself, so for many years he worked on the next drafts, but he hated everything he created. He wanted to start fresh, with a new first word.

He built a pyre between two tree trunks, and he burnt all of his life’s work, every page, every image, every idea. They both watched the flames, felt the warmth on their faces. They saw the moon in the black sky turn red behind the smoke.

Daniel Chacón lives on the border of El Paso, Texas, and Ciudad Jüarez. He has three books of fiction and teaches in a graduate writing program at UTEP. He specializes  in Latin-American fiction, Kafka, and fiction writing. This story is  from his new collection in progress.

Michelle Gaddes WATERCOLOUR SIGNATURES

WATERCOLOUR SIGNATURES

(ramblings while reading ‘a pocket Kit’ by Christopher Kelen)

 Michelle Gaddes

Company in the room is discussing LSD –

I recall it like a favourite cousin, fondly.

I remember a decade or more ago. Our time.

Watercolour signatures in Katoomba, invaded.

I sat like a lady waiting to murder a portrait…

On a blue, purple-pavement-evening on steel chair –

all beautiful and seductive with musk attitude.

Architecture spoke. It spoke!

Retro, mountainous evening indigo buildings gossiped

the last one hundred years, electric whispers.

And Greek chefs pondered origins, leering, curious.

I could not see for flowers and taxis.

Watercolour evenings saturated my senses; late night

ghosts, drunk, sat at railway restaurants, in groups,

lecherous, longing my

pout which was damask and carefree,

wayward, wilful and scared.

I woke afterward, without sleeping

to mornings of holy lead light dreams

and uber-dimensional sobbing.

 

Michelle Gaddes is a writer from Australia who should be currently finishing her research for her M.A.

 Read more of her work in Danse Macabre ~ L ~

Michael Mc Aloran EXCERPT OF A WORK IN PROGRESS: 20–22

20–22

Michael Mc Aloran

#20-…Of the better that can be, other than in exile, (having clasped the severed hand that gave, and found it lacking), yet scattered, murmuring still, fading out, silences fading out, echoing, and then of nothing, dreamless speech, a taste of blood mocking the stitch, the roving eye: stillness of the thankless cull, echoing again, cease of it, stepping forth and yet then receding, from out of corners, when or then, the ceaseless itch, breathing or non-stir in the dark, till mockery, ( little more than nothing), until the drowning of it, scattered once more as if the never having been, as of ash, as of the laughter of confetti, ask of the silenced all there will be nothing to come and to reclaim, its absent lingering, steel shaft, bone wrack/ trace of a muffled screaming, as the fingers trace, caress the dead speech of it, knowing yet ever the un-knowing, lost of/ for the long distance of it, there’ll be, sudden shrill out into the hollow asking of what, there held in distances never to be traced, from out of corners, all silent, as if nothing had ever been nor ever will be, (spit, excavate for nothing more), all for the again of it, the strive, the buckle of it, the gritted teeth of it, seething lest the blood taste of the final falter, the silent flesh echoing outwardly, yet no nothing else there of vast, foreign, stripped down, denuded rot, a kaleidoscope of death in the emaciated skull of it, rattle of one, of two, of three: dance the jig of the dragonfly, till stillness unto birth in a menagerie of skies ablaze, yet some subtle of it, break lest it, fade none yet fading, from out of which, till then having uttered the gallowing speech and the clasp of the red raw rush of blood, till breath again, till the roving eye stretched, mocking the blade of  abattoir, in a catascope of light blood-red, given to un-frozen, sun of the nothing ever having been, (excavate for nothing, more than…), till close and then abandon, wretch and bile from a gut of rusty nails, the hard scar and the tooth claiming of the shadows, again whispering as if speech never would or could suffice, the hands lapsed, death absent, scald of worthless bone ashen absent heart, till again, breaking again, gathering, scattering, confetti of fragmented ice, yet never the retraced step, the dissipated motion, the silence feeding, speech dreamless of the cull thankless, a barbed lung of incapacity, oblivion measured out upon the pulsing tongue, yet cut through, a barrage of meagre flowering insects of larval maggotry, (little more than nothing), yet back-speech like breathing in the vapours of dead airs, pierced through, dreaming still, until the last, the recourse, skull of an empty auditorium of shadows flitting the walls from out of said corner all is viewed, discerned, till mockery again, till the swallowing of the tongue reclaims the murmurs and all is lost to the laughter of severed wings and drowning silences, paralysis of the sudden shrift shrill out into the ricket limbs of it, (watch them arise, seasoned, deft, not a sound, a step, trace, vapours all back then to sabotage), into the…limbs buckled of…final falter…emaciated…vast…foreign…there’ll be…the dead speech of it…still the laughter in spite of it…rattle one, or two…of three…fade none yet forever fading…mocking the stitch, a taste of blood in the dark silence…

#21-…Fade none, yet forever fading, mocking the stitch, a taste of blood in the dark silence, all astray as of ever having been, begun yet of what how and as of then or else, traceless, warm breath upon cold glass, through which, no, of  nothing through which, or out there where vast is nigh, where vast escapes, subtle then to retrace where the held hand crumbles to final ash, where the blood is none and the fleeting songs meld into a cacophony of whispers, (dream again), till silenced, time abated, ever stammering, a wound closed in the tightened fist bleeding vicariously upon the vacant earth, or the cold stone nocturne of there else, as they say, as there may be, till trace again, forever fading, all astray yet echoing as if one could, fleshed as always, breath no no silence in that nor in the decibel heart, the bones…none, collapsed into thy splendour then to/ echo on where none is all once more, again the dissipating speech, the lapse and lapse of it again, ever the over and over again, flayed unto sleep, there’ll be, in that same darkness, rocking in the dark, (dream again), at swim in the slash-hook desire of it, graced with this, till unsaid, breach and then birth, till colours claimed of foreign vapours, or out there, traceless again, adagio of the blood, a  meld of silver silences, knowing nothing of the infinite in the breath, till scar and the luxury of death arise, till hush, till laughter, till the insane laughter of the cylindrical room’s silence, where night births in the lungs of nothingness, void there or else, in the withered seeds scattered upon bloody sands, drifting in and out of speech again, unto whom and with what accord and from what spasm of touch, still yet sudden in outcry, shimmering in the night, all other sounds having faded, slashed out, the candle extinguished, knock again, echo, knock upon cold glass…echo again, where vast is nigh, where vast is nothing, (dream again), as the less and less gathers in momentum, no no nothing, no tears yet breaking the surface, as begun, until what, scattered leaves, the flesh drowned out, in the meat of it, the violence of it, ah burst the stitches and devour, a scar to touch in times of subtle butchery, striding less and less yet yes, (say it), there might yet be, rich with the poverty of the grave, the mind sheared, yet still the glint of the blade in the sun, atrophic with colours as if the dawn were…something, till silenced, breathing down the knowledge of the clock, tick once, spasm, tick again, till vacant of eye, (dream again), the eyes frozen over, the rats yet again, having never left, here again with the rats carousing the naked feet, all for and to be resolved, it is said, for that, and all that came before, no nothing, no nothing new nor never having been said before, till the dance is over, almost, remembering the taste, and the hand that touched, and the flesh that warmed, before the vapours came to the decibel heart, void or there else, slashed out, till hush, it is said…

#22-…Before the vapours came, to the decibel heart, void or there else, slashed out, till hush, it is said, yet never spoken of again, the broken dry fingers turning to subtle ashes, as spasm unto, ever, feeding the distance of it, till dry end else and fallen pageantry, (succumb), the char of the black rain of dissipating speeches, still turning yes to follow, to disregard, where the shadows fall, where claims are sought and lapse is found to cease from the outset, yes, to dry the sun with tears, it has been murmured, some succour, where the breathing teeth bite to redeem the scar’s echoing, still long, still afar, till choke, till rend till final…and then of it again, hollowed out yet onward into vacuous spaces, till taught, to know nothing of it, the whip dripping fresh tears, ah take it, knowing the nothing of it, the basking in it, final drought, perhaps, it is said, till rotting over, till fester, approximate, (succumb), no not once yet how in majesty it was that once it was myriad, as if one mattered, in the shake of it, biting still, tra-la-la, said spun and naught, traces of naught in the lungs, the familiarity of the guillotine, spasm of raw meat and abattoir without pulse yet only of the pulse, try trace again, decibel or no, void or there else, hush, it says, lacking voice, yet barely heard and never fully acquainted, rambling jinx-ridden with the pox of it, till stray it comes back, (a slap to the face), ah the raw rash skinned of it to say of it little lest there be nothing of it, in the end, till drive sets forth into the wasteland stretched out unto final, ever sought, ah the bask of it, the vapours arising up as of a desert highway, and all and all setting out, yes headless again, soundless again, as if tears could speak, (succumb), ice again, frozen again, turning unto nowhere further nowhere else, no no more questioning soliloquys, the laughter of the skull shuddering till breath fails and the hand’s absence unto ashes knows of it, as if to say, as of its silences, till known, breaking dead, breaking upon the rocks of all aspiration, the teeth cut blind bled and ragged, no nothing, no noise till dread again, succumb again, yet the rapture, the ecstasy, shock unto static knowledge and the death of it, the violence of it, all said all done, till rocked unto slumber as of the dying, (we’ll know), clamber else, from out of pit from out of love what of love a deathly disease, a slashed wrist, taste the crimson, the scarlet, (succumb), till festerless, some succour, no never again, and then of it again, there’ll be, the jaw stretched taught, there’ll be, breaking out of none, no nothing, the light screams, no, the light erased, out of vaccuum, there’ll be a lie, a callous carousel, try trace again, out of which, tra-la-la, till rend, till final…

Michael Mc Aloran was Belfast born, (1976). His most recent work has appeared in various print and online zines, including Carcinogenic Poetry, PMI, Calliope Nerve, The Recusant, Sex & Murder Magazine, In Between Altered States, Horror, Sleaze & Trash, Negative Suck, Graffiti Kolkata, Pratishedhak, Prothomoto, Danse Macabre, amphibi.us, The Plebian Rag, Full of Crow, Gloom Cupboard, Gutter Eloquence, Fashion For Collapse, Fragile Arts Quarterly, Clockwise Cat, Sein Und Werden, Milk Sugar, The Medulla Review, Counterexample Poetics, Heavy Bear, Mastodon Dentist, Peripheral Surveys, Nothing, No-one, Nowhere, etc. He has authored a number of chapbooks, including ‘The Gathered Bones’, (Calliope Nerve Media), ‘Final Fragments’, (Calliope Nerve Media), & ‘The Death-Streaked Air’ (Virgogray Press), ‘Debris’, (Erbacce-Press), ‘The Rapacious Night‘, (Calliope Nerve Media) & ‘Unto Naught’, (Erbacce-Press). A full length collection of poems, ‘Attributes’, was published by ‘Desperanto’, (NY), in 2011…He has also self-published a number of chapbooks, a play, and another full-length poetry collection, ‘Of Dead Silences’…

Karl Travis NEANDERTHAL RISING

NEANDERTHAL RISING

Karl Travis

The female Neanderthal was in the kitchen doing dishes, wearing a red slip, smoking a cigarette. The male Neanderthal came in wearing a wife-beater tucked into black dickie pants with a belt.
She ignored him as he picked a cup from the shelf and poured it full of hot black coffee. He grunted at her casually. Still, she ignored him, slowly blowing dry puffs of greay-yellow smoke into the early morning distance of her own cold emotional silence.
He stared at her in disbelief; his large round puffy lower lip hanging open; shaking his head quizzically, blinking. He shrugged his massive shoulders, twisting and curling his face into a question mark that resolved without a sound. Then he turned around and took his coffee with him into the back room, where he sat down into the fullness of his big brown chair.
She looked at him through the door of the kitchen, clenching her jaw, biting her cigarette, smoke fuming madly from her enormous primordial nostrils. She ran down the steps screaming with a dish in each hand and clobbered him on the head, just as he was about to take a sip. He was now out cold with a hot brown stain all over his once clean wife-beater.
Later that day, when he came to his primitive senses, he got up and got himself another cup of coffee. She was outside, on the back porch, smoking a cigarette, reading the daily paper. He sat down across from her and lit one. They exchanged soft grunts between quick sips and exhumed great vats of smoke from immense exhalations.
Over the course of their exchange, the female made a remark that deeply offended the male. It was something about her not wanting to have to buy him bigger pants, since he had gained weight after losing his job at the rock farm.
His face dropped. He stared into the ether, expressionless, as the rage built up within, boiling like hot mud from an ancient tar pit. She asked him a question. He answered with a grunt but his heart was not with it.
She came in and sat down on his big brown chair with her feet up; exhausted, annoyed, and troubled, trying to enjoy a moment of silence. A moment later he jumped into the room with a roar, swung his long strong arm, and slapped her across the face with his big hard dirt packed hand.
She was out flat with her eyes closed, head and legs hanging over the arms of the chair. He stood over her sweating, the very face of anger, with his whole body pulsing, flexing, and breathing.
Throughout the day, when one of them least expected it, the other would attack. She cracked him on the head with an iron skillet as he was passed through the kitchen; he head-butted her in the bathroom as she came out of the shower. The whole day was like a strange tennis match of raw emotional violence.
At night, after the long day of fighting, she came into the back room grunting about something. He looked up stony-faced, as if he didn’t care. She went on with her fists up in front of her, together as if she were holding a stick; then twisted them down and in at the sides, as if she were snapping it in two, symbolizing she wanted a divorce.
Too tired to fight, he stared into the night, as if she wasn’t there. Too tired to fight, she walked into the night air of their lonely bedroom. As she walked away, he flipped her off with his big long hairy middle finger.
Half an hour later, right above his waxy heavy cranium, a light bulb came on with a ding. His eyes opened wide as a thin smile spread across his thick-ass lips.
He got up, walked quietly to the bedroom, and turned on the bathroom light. He then closed the door, letting just enough light into the room where she was sleeping. He walked in and stopped, making sure she was asleep; then tiptoed over to the dresser.
On top, behind a picture of the female in a denim jacket and cotton skirt, taken the day after they were married, was a giant bag of weed. He grabbed the bag and some rolling papers and swiftly exited the room.
As soon as he got back, and was about to open the bag, the door cracked. It was the female in her red slip. Can I join you, she grunted. Of course, he snorted.
He rolled a crude fat joint. They smoked it until their eyes turned red, sucking the roach through an old clothespin. They rolled their eyes and laughed, shaking their heads, reminiscing about how bad the day had been.
Then it got quiet, a little awkward; a little nervous. By now they were both sitting on the floor. When the time was right, the male crawled over and kissed her on the lips. She groaned and slipped him the tongue.
They made out and fooled around on the floor for an hour. Then he fucked her from behind, on her knees, bent over the ottoman of his big brown chair; slowly, deliberately, with force, picking up speed as she moaned like a cow running home with a bell.

Karl Travis is an author and student at Butte College in Chico, CA, where he studies Journalism and Creative Writing. Karl is a husband and father and currently writes book reviews for the Chico News & Review.

Ken Poyner THE TRANSFORMATION

THE TRANSFORMATION

Ken Poyner

I think I can see myself in the suit, but I am actually in the suit, so any thoughts of seeing myself are an illusion of embarrassment, or fear, a fantasy borne of wanting not to be here: in the suit. I raise my hand, dragging it heavily up like it were tethered to an army of glass marbles, and it is a paw. A huge bear’s paw with faux claws pushed permanently out and the fur brushed perilously back. From inside the mask I have to look at everything straight on. Peripheral vision shows me only the dark inside of the suit. Twisting my head is nearly impossible, but I can twist the body a little and I use my stance to spin my perspective about. With exercise, I can peer almost completely around me. On horseback, a lady rides by scantily dressed and I am thinking: circus, I am in the circus. How many times have I seen a woman like this and thought: sex. Now I see her and I think: circus, this is a circus. Her rhinestones flash and confuse like small fish feeding in an aquarium. I recognize the shape of a woman but somehow it is a curious shape, bent in the wrong places though they must be right, wound in its arcs like brevity on embarrassment . There is movement all around me and I look to the other bears being shoved forward. Most of them look to be real bears. Many have dropped to all fours, and even those standing are hunched, half ready to drop down. I have no idea if they find this more comfortable, or if they are paying homage, or stoop in protection. I do not know what it is to be comfortable as a bear. In this suit, my balance is disharmonious, and I cannot think how strange the disparate gravities for curvature and being erect might be for real bears. I have my own movements to master. There, way over there, a man is holding up his lash to show all the bears they should be standing, but he is too far away to impress most of the animals. In spite of my condition and wonder, I am waiting for the woman to ride past again. Things are beginning to get back to normal. One bear stumbles into me and I go over like a sack of pigeons. I have to roll to my belly, place my hands beneath me and press up to my knees. I try for all of thirty seconds to get one leg under me, but the suit will not let me. I set myself stick thistle firm, then kick up both legs at a time. From the effort my head is swirling and I realize how hot it is in the suit. I am learning so many new angles that my skull is beginning to hurt. My situation is crowding out common thoughts, like water being squeezed from a fresh sponge. What comes back to me is not emptiness, but a sense of moments. This need, that sensation, the flash of hurt, the memories of ……. Memories of what? How did I become trapped in a bear suit? Why am I in a circus, waiting for the woman on the horse to drift by so I can marvel why she thrills me so. Why does she thrill me so? Is it the baffling of the light, or should there be another reason? I move forward with the other bears and when I see one on a ball I think: I can do this. And when that bear falls I leap on the ball, far more agile than I thought I could ever be in this suit, and begin to walk the ball around the ring and the man with the lash is quickly there, smiling, holding the lash high like a moth in a streetlight. The woman goes by and she is standing on the horse, the horse and she one animal, one large concoction that I pursue only with my eyes, that I perceive as one animal: a mane and arms and two heads with one body and all the glitter which is merely a bizarre furless skin that in the wild would be frightening. But this is not the wild. Here I perform. I am a performer. A half step is a roll of the ball forward. A half step. Another half step. Do not let my claws puncture the ball. A half-step. When I finally fall off the ball I rise up on my hind legs, prying open my honeysuckle mouth, and the applause from the dimness around me is like water in a clear stream congratulating the rocks. Where do I remember that from? Where have I seen a stream and spoken with the rocks? Where? I lift my paws in acknowledgement and even the slightest huff of air in the snout sounds like home.

Ken Poyner has recently appeared in “Corium”, “PANK”, “Danse Macabre”, “The Medulla Review”, “Frigg”, “Eclectica”, and in the legion elsewhere. He lives with his power lifter wife and several rescue cats in the southeast corner of Virginia.

Brent Lucia LADY AND THE ALBATROSS

LADY AND THE ALBATROSS

Brent Lucia

I didn’t believe her when she told me the name of the road I was looking for, so I asked her twice.

“Goat Skin Road, house number 34,” she said, her eyes staring off down the highway. Her rocking chair moved slowly, above the gas pumps and the ice machines below the deck. The woman wore a pink, flowered dress that was tattered and stained, hanging slightly below her knees. An old black lab sat by her feet, panting in the sun.

“Thank you,” I said and pulled away as my wheels kicked up dirt and rocks, slapping them against the car parts of my 97, Honda Convertible. I had no money for gas—just sound advice. But the woman in pink seemed crazy. Her directions were all I had, and I was too far to turn back now. The sun kept its blazing eye on me as I lit up my last butt and pushed across the New York countryside.

My wife Maria always talked about rare beauty. Stuff that existed in flashes and as she put it, “reinvented the soul.” She cried when our son took his first steps, when she saw the sun rise above the hills of Montmartre; and if the moon was to turn green, she’d cry then too. When she cried I would always hold her, feeling like I was somewhere else—somewhere in between the emotional moment and the rational world inside me. I could always wipe away her tears, but could never understand where they came from. There was always this unspoken distance, a space in our growing love for each other.

My drive continued. Maria would have been in the passenger seat, studying the cornfields that soared through the window, telling me to put my cigarette out and feeling cheated when I said no. She had tried to buy me the Patch, attempting to get me to quit. She insisted I do it for the kids. But she was in the clouds now and I felt haunted, driving by myself on this one-way road.  Ahead I could see the sky turning gray; shadows were covering the sugar maple trees and the wooden farmhouses as the sun disappeared behind the shifting clouds.

My phone rang. Arthur from work. “Tom! How’s the Hanley Account going? I need those papers by Monday.” Arthur and his fucking deadlines.

“I’m on it. I’m upstate right now; will call you when I get back,” I said. No time to chat, no need to sell him a lie.

“Upstate? Tom you got a major account resting on your shoulders here with a deadline looming. Are you aware of your-“

Did Arthur ever ask how I was doing? Did he ever care? Things in the office were never personal, strictly business. Maria was always there for me when I couldn’t handle the stress, when all I wanted was a hug and the bullshit to just go away.

“Sorry Arthur, I gotta go.” I dropped the phone in the passenger seat and picked up the note from the Will Lawyer again, I must have read it three dozen times:

For my husband, Thomas J. Farramond, I give nothing of financial value that is in my possession.  My last request is for him to visit the old women in the pink dress on Franklin Lane. She will lead Thomas J. Farramond to his awakening.

Above the dark clouds a flock of seagulls drifted past my car, coloring the sky with dabs of white and gray. Maria loved birds. She could stop mid sentence to watch one move across the sky. She would sometimes go bird watching with her friends in Central Park, spending an entire afternoon gazing into the trees with her binoculars. Maria was built to fly. She always wanted to soar far away from her office job in White Plains and the staleness of suburbia; to remove herself from her comfort zone and experience another life. She would talk about quitting her job and moving the family to another country, maybe Spain or Argentina—any place that seemed exotic and warm. Where the American Dream didn’t have to dictate our lives. Reality was my job, keeping the family within the four walls of our chosen society, making sure there were no attempts at escape.

My phone kept ringing. Arthur would get over it. Or maybe not. Maybe I was jobless and he was calling me to let me know where I could pick up my things at the office. Suddenly I didn’t care; I didn’t want to pretend that I did anymore.  “Fuck it!“ I screamed out loud.

Maria was laughing in the passenger seat, she was wild with excitement.

I pulled onto Goat Skin Road, house number 34. The house stood alone, set back in the woods and painted white with brown shutters. There was a small perennial garden in front, mostly filled with orange and pink Begonias. An old Volvo sat in the driveway, but the lights in the house were out. I peaked behind the garage and saw numerous cages scattered about the large yard. There was something in each cage, fighting to get out, scratching at the walls.

I thought back to our moments together, to the ones that never seeped through all the way but were now glowing in my mind. “And there are numerous variations of the species itself,” Maria once said, looking at me with excitement as she read from her computer screen. “The Wondering species is the largest Albatross, one of the largest birds in the world.” Her eyes screamed for life as she scanned each picture. I was listening but falling short of a response, failing to commit to the conversation. To me the Albatross was just another bird, one I slightly remember from an old poem in my High school, English class. Maria would look at me, knowing that the excitement wasn’t shared, that the moment was for her, and her alone.

I walked up to the front door and rang the bell.  A young woman came to the door in a purple tank top and Levis, looking at me with a bright smile. She seemed to know me before I even opened my mouth to say hello, “Stay right there, and step back.” She said, turning around to disappear into the dark room. I stepped back down onto the grass, waiting in confusion. Shrills from animals I have never encountered before were escaping from the dark space, competing with the buzzing of my blackberry phone.  I could feel Maria’s breath against the back of my neck, stopping the chills that were moving up my spine.

When the woman came out from the darkness all I could see was the cage and her two arms holding it from underneath as she walked towards me, her face completely covered by the giant creature within the cell. The animal was bursting with energy, fighting the four walls of his prison.

I suddenly heard Maria’s voice, a set of words that crept up from behind me, “And from my neck so free, the Albatross fell off, and sank like lead into the sea.” The sound of a metal latch rang out; the creature stretched its wings.

“STAND BACK!” The woman shouted.

The giant bird launched out before my eyes as a sea of white and grey fluttered in front of me.  A piercing shriek burst from the Albatross, celebrating its escape.  I stood, covering my face, waiting for the right moment to exhale.

“Breathe,” someone kindly spoke as I looked up above- watching the flashing moment of beauty that disappeared into the dark clouds.

“My name is Brent Lucia and I was born and raised in Massachusetts but have been living in New York City for the past ten years. I went to school for business, worked in real estate for a brief period of time and quit to pursue my interest in becoming an English professor. I am currently an adjunct lecturer at City College of New York and have been teaching both literature and writing courses for the past three years. I heard about Danse Macabre through a friend of mine at City College of New York.” Danse Macabre welcomes Brent to our pages!