[as a side dish]
She strokes all four hands on its fur
[to prepare it]
She gently straddles its back and rides
[right back to me]
Even secrets to it she confides
[that I will kill you]
About Juan Perez
After a decade of military service, including the First Gulf War (1991), Juan Manuel Pérez is now a public school history teacher and author of six poetry chapbooks which includes Dial H For Horror (2006), plus two full contemporary multi-culture poetry collections, Another Menudo Sunday (2007) and the e-book, O Dark Heaven (2009). He has also completed three other poetry manuscripts: W.U.I.: Written Under The Influence of Trinidad Sanchez, Jr., Comic Book Love Affair and Make Tortillas Not War.
He is a member of the San Antonio Poets Association, the Poetry Society of Texas, and the Science Fiction Poetry Association, as well as student of the great Chicano poet Trinidad Sánchez, Jr. He has also been a featured reader at many poetry venues in Southwest Texas.
His work has recently appeared in Jazma Online, The People's Comic Book Newsletter, Boundless, Voices De La Luna, International Poetry Review, Illumen, Star*Line: the Journal of the Science Fiction Poetry Association, The Poet Magazine, di-verse-city, Voices Along The River, The Dreamcatcher, Inkwell Echoes, The Palm's Leaf, and Message of the Muse. He was recently named the second Runner Up in the 2009 San Antonio Poet's Association's Poet Laureate Competition.
http://www.juanmperez.com
SANCTIMONIOUS SAINT AT THE SINNER'S BALL
by Nathan Rowark
Sanctimonious saint at the sinner's ball
and my ticket's turned to dust.
As the tumultuous drums drown the vodka and rum
flowing over the bodies of lust,
Through the rose-tinted scry of my twisted mind's eye
stands a poet and beggar aghast,
As the dwarfed brigade of the preaching concave
are consumed in the fires of their past.
Making my way to the bar, seeing hope from afar,
I pass by a fashion's high sin.
As she tilts down her head her eyes roll up in red
and thick diamante garrotes neck and limb.
In a moment of shock, running demons amok
in a last ditch attempt for the door;
A man stops me in threads and what descends
from his lips are the reasons, what whys and what fors.
Said he, "This place that you mar is living proof that we
are all the deepest desires yet to come.
And if you continue this fashionable song, you will stay here,
and damned be every one."
Unknowingly eloped in the thoughts of my hope,
he did not see the truth fly his way,
And with fire in my heart and courageous art,
I dispensed my own song for display.
Said I, "The devils you speak are not just old and effete
but their manners are portrayed in your words,
All the people I know this way fight to not go,
for none of this can be real anyway."
In mid note of the rhyme, I found frozen in time
the devil's party-night sign on the wall,
And asleep in my glass, I fathomed the crass
revelers above looming tall.
I passed out on wine, in mid-flow of a good time,
and a taxi was called for my home.
Yet with blurry eyes fixed on the bar spirits mixed
I could swear I saw shadows still roam.
In the back of the cab facing the evening's tab,
I recalled the dark sight of dreams,
Because it often relates that subconscious warnings do state
that the path is not all that it seems.
UNENDING BATTLE OF SELF
by Nathan Rowark
Under fire and in chaos wrought the battle for my soul is fought.
Within my mind, self untaught takes arms against the dark onslaught.
A final stand becomes too large as dogma flashes the fields to charge.
Casualties are doubts homage to the fall of vanities' entourage.
Rising up with a fearsome sigh, the bowman's anger fills the sky.
With shields smashed and hopes goodbye, my conscience is the last to die.
The victors speech fill gaps unsaid and gloats upon the bleak now wed
amongst the blades; by river bled I rise up and leave the dead.
The war for self is rarely lost and budgeted in acceptable cost.
If spirit powers down too soft then apathy's the coin not tossed.
The wage is bad; the nights are long to solidify in this peculiar song.
Once more to take the highroad strong? And stand against the rights of wrong?
The field turns to ash and dust in empathic view of my foe's dark lust.
Reflection mirrored of nighttime rust that struggles for this world to bust.
Our blackened side fulfilled by hate, to balance out the neutral weight.
Tipping scales for either bait endangers self and mental state.
Mead moon shines with silvery light to witness self's gargantuan fight.
Neuroses troops poised in flight, the battle royale now far from sight.
The winning move deployed in zest is how the wretch can cheat this test,
And as karma blows in from the west, I dispatch his form at my behest.
Job mentally done for now, at least I commit to the truth of the unending beast.
The dual of humanities' pie as meat, forever to plague its soulful seat.
CROSS BUT SHAN'T
by Nathan Rowark
The bridge that I should cross but shan't is that of which I could but can't.
Cold metal structures lay to lead but going there will make me bleed.
I sit upon the bank and gaze at the unfolding of the plans she's laid.
Knowing damage yet to come, if I followed her dreams undone.
No longer one that wants to save, I leave her side to watch her cave.
It fills me with the depths of dread to watch unfurl what's in her head.
A beauty that to me resides the hopes of two that well in eyes,
Yet effective pull of darkest strife now takes her down as nighttime's wife.
About Nathan Rowark
Nathan Jonathan David Lee Rowark was born in the pagan county of Hertfordshire, England. Nathan has been writing since he was six years old and he wrote his first novel at the age of twelve when he moved to Essex.
Nathan currently writes screenplays and splits his time between running his own business and directing short horror movies. At thirty-two years young, Nathan's hopes are to follow his first love, which is poetry.
Nathan is Wiccan, which he feels, along with life experiences, has helped to form ideas for his poetry. His family's surname was originally Warlock and it means, according to Norse sailors, "to bind with words," or "spell singer." Therefore, words are in his blood.
If he were asked to sum up his love of poetry, it would be the way a poet can convey situations, emotions and physical environments with just a few words and is the only medium he has ever found that can have such power. Nathan is an eclectic human being and has discovered that an open mind is the passage to the divine.
http://www.inspired-words.co.uk
SUMMER TWILIGHTS
by Stephanie Smith
you remember
summer twilights
hiding under picnic tables
and behind backyard sheds
mingling with vampires in the trees
and reading Stephen King by candlelight
because the boogeyman is real
to a nine year-old
and the neighbors
are not what they seem
THE DEATH MAIDEN
by Stephanie Smith
the death maiden kisses the moon
her hair
smells like waste
dress tattered and caked
with dirt from a grave
the delicate bone beneath her skin
quivers with each thought of the downfall
before sunrise she
sang today is beauty
with innocent face
said life and death sit side by side
her dance of existence
was cheery and lively
but inside I knew she was nervous
she gave me flowers
that grew along a river bank
where it rained all night
tears from the moon
I think of the burden
she'll be carrying
very soon
CITY OF THE DEAD
by Stephanie Smith
Here in this city of the
dead we cast wishes into
the suicidal fountain
On hot summer days you
can smell the flesh from the
citizens who stroll
down sidewalks of bone
In this city there are morgues
on every street corner
and maggot-filled dreams crawl in
the minds of those who live here,
calling us to the grave
A CHOICE
by Stephanie Smith
The angels came to wash my face
And falling: a thousand drops
of crimson tears on my sleeve
All alone on the mountain,
posed at the edge
with tattered wings
perceiving an empty dream,
I was given two choices:
to feel again
or join the angels
who no longer sing in their
choirs but ravage the night
with bloody bird claws
I chose the latter
About Stephanie Smith
Stephanie Smith is a poet and writer hailing from Pennsylvania. Her work has appeared in such publications as Dark Fire Fiction, Eviscerator Heaven, House of Horror, Niteblade, Not One of Us, and Paper Crow.
Stephanie's first chapbook, titled Dreams of Dali, is available from Flutter Press. http://imajican.livejournal.com
WHEN GHOST CHILDREN SPEAK
by Paul Sohar
The voices of ghost children grow
like mildew on the tapestry,
they wind around the lily pattern
floating in the background free
where the backs of chairs and sofas turn,
where only cobwebs stand on guard,
that's where they can wiggle up
on the backs of adults who park
their lives in pointed circles around the
gray litany of the coffee table
till these trickling voices touch their earlobes
with the tingling of a fable
fanned by the naughty unseen children;
then the grown-up backs will twitter,
speak about the temperature
and the snow that's sure to wither
next week or sooner when these voices
slither back where they came from
and where they send all those who listen
bang into a maelstrom:
say! whispers hone the craft of kissing...
THE ABANDONED FARMHOUSE
by Paul Sohar
The carcass of the old farm house
harbors no sounds
yet I'm afraid to follow the slender
sprite of an early spring breeze
as she slips into the vandalized
living room and
gliding past the dusty bones of old dining chairs
she slithers into a water-stained
volume of poetry—
fluffing up the pages she seeks out
some comforting rhymes to rest on until
massaged by the soft iambs
she creeps out again into
the ghostly late afternoon sun
tiptoeing on the skittish leaves
of a moribund rhododendron
she climbs up
on an invisible rope
back into the sky
and then there's nothing left to show
that I was standing here by the broken window
and like a peeping tom I watched
her wordless tryst with an undead poet
in the forgotten old farmhouse
trapped in an idle growth of maples.
THE KNOCK
by Paul Sohar
It was quarter past nine when I
heard a knock on the front door.
I looked up from my book,
but the door looked no different,
the off-white semi-gloss paint
had started to crack and curl
in a malevolent grimace some
time before, and now it
didn't bother me at all; I knew
I could outstare a problem but
why waste time on it when
I could be reading or falling
asleep in the armchair with
a floor lamp positioned right
next to it. In fact, the door was as still
as any of the pictures on the walls,
even its grimace seemed to sag
and soften as I sat there thinking
I could hang the door on the wall
as an object of art, after all
it had a message, something to say,
maybe a lot more than the tulips in
the print beside me or the blue hills
in the landscape above the fireplace.
About Paul Sohar
Paul Sohar got to pursue his life-long interest in literature full time when he went on disability from his job in a chemistry lab. The results have slowly showed up in Agni, Bryant Literary Review, Chiron Review, Grain, Hotel Amerika, International Poetry Review, Kenyon Review, Main Street Rag, Rattle, and many others.
Paul has seven books of translations into English from his native Hungarian language, but now a volume of his own poetry titled Homing Poems is available from Iniquity Press. His latest book is titled True Tales of a Fictitious Spy, and it is creative nonfiction about the Stalinist gulag in Hungary.
http://www.echapbook.com/poems/sohar
THE CITY OF THE DEAD
by Peter Steele
Your dreams have long since been forgotten.
And your flesh is pallid, dry and rotten.
See how your eyes have fallen out of your head.
Welcome to the city of the dead.
The darkness of night is forever here to stay.
And no matter how hard you try, you'll never get away.
Remove all those thoughts of freedom from your head,
Because you are in the city of the dead.
Soon, you'll learn that the dead no longer have a care.
They just mesmerize you with a godless stare!
The maggots are feeding on the brain inside your head.
Your refuge is now the city of the dead.
It is so hard to accept that you have died.
And you often wonder why the angels lied!
But forget all the deceitful words they said
And take your place in the city of the dead.
FULL MOON
by Peter Steele
The moon shone boldly
Through the trees,
Tantalized by a
Midnight breeze.
Through the dark
A naked creature prowled.
The night was alive
With its primitive howls.
On all fours
With animal charm,
Through the fields
Into the local farm.
To the cattle
It gives an evil gloat,
And with teeth like daggers
Tears out their throat.
The farmer emerged with
A loaded shot gun in hand,
And scanned with a keen eye
His trespassed land.
A rustle of leaves
Up above on the grassy verge
And a human wolf
Did stealthily emerge.
With a gasp of shock
What Fears Become: An Anthology from The Horror Zine Page 37
