after Servant
Rambles past ringlets, ruffles, rouge to you,
end of the queue, interviewed for the show,
television lady forgets your debut —
segment you are someone she chose to know.
Her fascinations are fleeting and slight,
provincially dressed princess one night. Lives
she catalogues on oak shelves in plain sight.
Decades of ingenues in her archives,
December 27th, 2020
after Servant
In vermillion lipstick, a Dorothy
blue dress, borrowed ruby, ring finger, beaus
to impress, submit to a coy lady’s
request for your red shoes before she goes
another night to Oz, woos a tasteless
Lothario. Leave you with a boy, shrewd
serpent in a kitchen sink. First, you finesse,
send for something red to drink. Latter, you
will batter until still quivering, peel.
Boy who prepares, serves eel on a plate rues
the bell which summoned him, the man of steel
who waits to throw him out; you must stroke his rage.
At the grownup table, you will come of age.
October 10th, 2020
We will race, her sisters, there, past gargoyles
down a swiveled silver stair. One who rides
its rail, body of snake, chiseled coil
to marble tongue will take the lead then chide
the rest — a mob with matches in pockets
Continue reading “Womannotated – Little Witches”
August 29th, 2020
She offers flesh beneath aromatic trees
against dark gates without password, key, sign
her kind is welcome here — save kerosene
in lanterns near. Arms in grate, stretched supine,
between dove gray sky, columbines, beside
cobblestone of almond, slate. Closes eyes, Continue reading “Womannotated – The Second Time”
August 16th, 2020
(Content warning: horror, death, suicide, some discussion of Midsommar with what could be considered general, mild spoilers)
A scent in twilight past breaths of the beast
who stalks the edges of forests on the
phalanges of feet, quickening heartbeats
of little lost girls, panting in pine trees
near the end of the world. Pale hirsute ear
you peer where the needles are bare. Eyes straight
ahead, mutter pieces of prayers. Fear
August 9th, 2020
Each maiden slumbers in her childhood bed.
Crow collects a lock from each, twines a nest
with garden twigs, hair ribbons azure, red—
sufficient room for one without a guest. Continue reading “Womannotated – Crow Castle”
A sample page from Crow Carriage, an annotated poetic horror novel set in a Victorian English seaside village. This is the format of the Crow Carriage book, a sonnet with an expansive annotation that tells a story in prose below (the same format as my book Flutter available at my website and Twist In Time).
You lie beneath a dozen nightmares. Screams
careening down a crow-covered stair wake
you in the last second before the dream.
Continue reading “Womannotated – The Night A Crow Must Go Away”
Ten miles upon a tufted seat, elm trees
to village path, discreet, a beast will ride
to seaside town. One hooded straggler by
him found, too young this hour to be outside
indecent bodice, brown eyes wide. Fingers Continue reading “Womannotated, Crow Carriage”
She sleepwalks in your washi house in crin-
oline, emaciated mouse weeks you
forget to feed, a nibbler, toenails, skin,
until feet bleed free, soil sheets, bamboo
floor, trafficked hardly anymore except
somnabulistic scarlet toes who
map labyrinths, shake off bedclothes, accept
razored teeth in pale furrows. Ankle chewed
until, unconscious, she seeks the ground. Bandage,
next time you come around — rose macaroons
gunpowder tea — into a paper cage
fantasy, unbolted door, girl you freed,
six months ago, believes enough to bleed.
Kristin Garth is a Pushcart, Best of the Net & Rhysling nominated sonnet stalker. Her sonnets have stalked journals like Glass, Yes, Five:2:One, Luna Luna, and more. She is the author of fourteen books of poetry including Pink Plastic House (Maverick Duck Press), Candy Cigarette Womanchild Noir (The Hedgehog Poetry Press), the forthcoming Flutter: Southern Gothic Fever Dream (TwistiT Press), The Meadow (APEP Publications) and Shut Your Eyes, Succubi (Maverick Duck). Follow her on Twitter @lolaandjolie and her website kristingarth.com
Covert art credit: Photo by Aimee Vogelsang on Unsplash
During my tenure as BHP’s Guest Editor in March 2018, I was lucky enough to publish many gifted writers. One of these was Kate Dlugosz, whose mythic poetry stayed with me long after my editorship was over. Earlier this month I invited her back onto Burning House Press for a gothic Halloween special. She agreed. Take note, this interview is merely masquerading as an interview. What follows is a gorgeous helping of dark prose poetry for those of us who have October in our bones. Enjoy! —Amee Nassrene Broumand
In your poem “Springtime,” you write: “If nothing else, I know owls come from flowers.” Tell us some more origin stories. Where do bats come from?
Bats come from song, as the shape of music from the cords formed of autumn constellations played by the wind upon the harp of the waning crescent moon. It is from the stars and the moon that the bat took flight from the night sky, the space between the stars where they learned to see by shape. And released by moonlight, through the darkened canopies of wine-red treetops they fly as hordes of poppy seeds, scattering over the moon as grey clouds, and the world below them becomes strange and wild and unknown in the dark. The bats echolocate the moths and the beetles in the night, and in the blindness of their own vision seeing with clarity the worlds of ghosts and spirits that pass over our own. You feel the first chill of autumn is the hiss of the bat as it grazes your neck. At times the bats hang down from the banisters of old barns, the wooden planks slicing the moon to shreds like a white moth between their fangs. And sometimes they sleep hanging from the limbs of oak trees by their claws before taking flight into purple dusk in search of blood, the moths and monsters prowling under moonlight. Bats suck the red from apples and rosehips and would consume the sun if they could sink their teeth into flame. Should you stare into the vast night sky on a clear autumn night, you are stargazing through the blackness of their wings. Continue reading “The Wolves Ripen: A Gothic Halloween Interview with Poet Kate Dlugosz”
BURNING HOUSE PRESS 