Download Report Date: Mar 19, 2008, 23:31:35 Category: Literature -> Poetry -> Horror & Macabre Stars: 0 Favourites: 2 Views: 29 (Full: 7)

Description:
I've always had sympathy for the monsters.

Published in Shit Creek Review, 2007.

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Monsters Lament

Jenny Greenteeth sighs
brackish bubbles, rippling the algae
nimbus of her hair. She's leaner
than in days when twiggy fingers
more often snatched at flailing limbs,
when arms would clasp
the wriggling strays until they slept.
Now her pond-bed gasps with Koi
and all she cradles
is an empty swell of rains.

Rawhead-and-Bloody-Bones
scratches cracked claws down
his scabby ribs; gates have sprouted
metal teeth, and yards are stalked
at night by crop-eared beasts
with jaws that put his own
to shame. Flourescent lighting
makes his nose bleed, whores
and babies alike preserved
behind its glaring rails.

Boogey Man wibbles his fingers
through duckweed, murmurs sympathy:
parents now tell sugared fictions
in which Darkness ever fails
against the Light, the hope
their children never know
a killer's smile or alley-trap,
the snap of toddlers breaking
in their hands.

The moon pales, sulks behind clouds.
Jenny sinks below pond-scum.
Boogey fishes brittle treats
from his pocket for the restless Bones.
Perhaps tonight they'll catch
an ankle, wrack a fugue-dream,
resurrect the notion of fear itself
as prophylactic, the comfort
of knowing something is still out there,
looming in the dark.




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