Tea for Two –By Kathryn Ptacek I didn’t mean it. really, I didn’t. not at all. the poison, that is. we were kids playing. tea party and all that. I was so literal. always. so we couldn’t have pretend tea. I had to mix something. there was this bag. I didn’t read what it was. I was a kid. kids don’t read directions or warnings. I scooped some granules out into the little teapot. it was green. the teapot. the granules were white. I poured a little water in. I stirred and stirred. then I poured the tea into our green plastic cups. and I told you, sternly, don’t drink this. it’s poison. you looked at me and smiled and drank. you always were a fool. even when we were kids. you didn’t feel well after that and ran home. you had to go to the hospital. to have your stomach pumped. I told him not to drink it, I said to my parents. they nodded. you were still my friend after that, and we grew up become lovers. we lived together for years then you drifted. I cried. you smiled. I begged to you to come back. you smiled. we talked, and I cried more and you returned home. and it was all good except for when it wasn’t. I always thought you were the fool. no. it was me. you knew then you could do anything anything to step on my heart. anything. I would beg you beg you to come back. I did. time after time, year after year. you’re back again. until the next time. let’s celebrate being together because we are civilized we can talk about anything, right? anything. have some tea. here in this bone china cup so delicate, so beautiful. and I’m telling you now. don’t drink this tea. don’t. really. don’t. you’re smiling again. but so am I. Kathryn Ptacek’s novels are now out as ebooks from Crossroad Press and Necon Ebooks. Her first collection of short stories, LOOKING BACKWARD IN DARKNESS, was released by Borgo Press in 2013. Also, she has short stories in three recent anthologies: FRIGHT MARE, EXPIRATION DATE, and FRIGHT MARE-WOMEN WRITE HORROR. Kathy lives in rural northwest New Jersey and shares her old Queen Anne home with lots of books, the requisite author cats, unusual teapots, and the occasional visiting mouse. She can be reached at gilaqueen@att.net or through her Facebook pages.
ALWAYS THE BLACK AND WHITE KEYS –By Corrinne De Winter The scent of absinthe incense lingers From Brazil. Of course I am a witch, raising the dead. Come, I say, pulling at their clothing, Wiping dirt from their bones. They are no less alive than I. Always lilies arrived from a stranger on a day of heartbreak. It was the season of resurrection When my mother passed away. The demarcation of sweet earth blooming, Forsythia, cherry trees, magnolia Against the pale horse of Death. Always Spring arrived in a day of heartbreak. I wait in a mirror for my mother to come, Write a message in response with lipstick or eyeliner. Always music dissolved me in days of heartbreak. Always the black and white keys nailed me down. Nominated four times for the Pushcart Prize, Corrine De Winter’s poetry, fiction, essays and interviews have appeared worldwide in publications such as the The New York Quarterly, Yankee, Sacred Journey, Fate, and over 900 other publications. She has been the recipient of awards from Triton College of Arts & Sciences, Writer’s Digest, The Esme Bradberry Award, The Madeline Sadin Award, The Rhysling Award, The Bram Stoker Award, and has been featured in Poet’s Market 1995-2016. Ms. De Winter is a member of HWA (Horror Writer’s Association), and the founder of SMALL WORLD FUND FOR CHILDREN. De Winter is the author of 9 collections of poetry & prose including Like Eve, The Half Moon Hotel, and Touching The Wound, which sold over 3000 copies in its first year, “The Women At The Funeral”, winner of the 2004 Bram Stoker Award for superior achievement in poetry, and “Tango In The 9th Circle.”
Enough –By Bruce Boston When the surf turns to galloping steeds thundering up and down the beach, their pounding hooves throwing clots of sand skyward, sending sunbathers and families swollen with children scurrying scared to their shiny cars, when the arms of night are filled with predatory birds who have developed a taste for human flesh, perched on church steeples, capitol domes, mail boxes, parking meters, awaiting those who prove unwary enough to venture into the dark, when trees from pole to pole and continent to continent kamikaze themselves on power lines and pipelines, roadways and railway tracks, leaving us shivering or sweltering in our four walls, when locusts swarm, plagues thrive and mutate, typhoons wail, oceans rise and overflow, when nuclear reactors meltdown, plastering the landscape with a storm of radioactive debris, when the Net collapses, virused to oblivion, never to rise again, when the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse come riding out of the clouds, their ghastly skulls bared and grinning, scythes and swords flashing, then at last we understand that Earth has had its fill of profligate madness and our turn at the wheel has passed. Bruce Boston is the author of more than fifty books and chapbooks, including the dystopian sf novel The Guardener’s Tale. His poems and/or fiction have appeared in Asimov’s SF, Analog, Weird Tales, Strange Horizons, Daily Science Fiction, Realms of Fantasy, The Nebula Awards Showcase and Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror. His poetry has received the Bram Stoker Award, the Asimov’s Readers Award, the Gothic Readers Choice Award, the Balticon Award, and the Rhysling and Grandmaster Awards of the SFPA. His fiction has received a Pushcart Prize, and twice been a finalist for the Bram Stoker Award (novel, short story). For more information, visit his website at www.bruceboston.com
NUCLEAR WINTER KISS –By Chad Stroup if a mushroom sprouts from the ground and stretches like a cloud does the blast still make a sound? we relish in the contoured flesh rough like a relief map every crevice a newly excavated cavern we decipher back braille burns like brittle bark professional prosthetics we peel rubbery layers away scrub off adhesive rub the meat raw our lips caress the burns fallout numbs the nerves fingers welded hair floating falling and sculpted by male pattern baldness ravaged by radiation rub the meat raw deeply sensually crack and roll the tightened knots bodies moaning like old ghosts hopeless mutations, united in war hollowed out husks of living char are you my hometown hibakusha honey? your one sullied eye grub-white soupy begging for a spoon to be dipped in it scooped in it let me taste your terrible tapioca in the aftermath the uncountable gray we are kissingandfuckingandpissingandcoupling in spite of sterility of infertility or perhaps in honor of these newfound blessings Chad Stroup received his MFA in Fiction from San Diego State University. His work has been featured in anthologies like Splatterlands and Creature Stew, and his poetry also appeared in the first two volumes of the HWA Poetry Showcase. Secrets of the Weird, Stroup’s debut novel, is forthcoming from Grey Matter Press. Visit Subvertbia, a home for some of his short fiction, poetry, and reviews at http://subvertbia.blogspot.com/, and drop by his Facebook page as well at https://www.facebook.com/ChadStroupWriter.
The Trappings of Poetry –By Michael Arnzen
My keyboard is a trigger pad. I wait for just the right moment and punch Ctrl+Alt+M — capturing my goddess of inspiration in a bear trap made of whittled down typewriter keys as sharp as a fistful of shanks she tries to crawl away like a leg-broken dying dog crooning something pained and panicky like a clown blubbering bad poetry but the chain keeps her pegged and she can only mope all bloody spinning around in tedious circles of increasing exhaustion going nowhere and after a while she finally gives up and just glares at me, breathing heavy like she can’t dream without movement and we get into this staring match that lasts as long as disease and I’m surprised she doesn’t even try to chew her own leg off or trick me into approaching she’d rather die than give me any thrilling ideas now but I know I can outlast her and soon she blinks to sleep like an animal that’s just been injected and as I pensively watch her beautiful body jerk to death splashing spastically in the inky puddle of her muse ooze I get this concept all over me and I write.
Michael Arnzen holds four Bram Stoker Awards and an International Horror Guild Award for his disturbing (and often funny) poetry, fiction, and other literary experiments. He holds a PhD in English from University of Oregon and teaches in the MFA program in Writing Popular Fiction at Seton Hill University. Raw Dog Screaming Press recently published the 20th Anniversary edition of his first novel (Grave Markings, along with a decade-long collection of his micropoetry (The Gorelets Omnibus), and will be releasing his new nonfiction study, The Popular Uncanny, this October. See what he’s up to now at gorelets.com