Category: Haunted Passages

Master of Rods and Strings, Jason Marc Harris’ debut novella, reviewed by Maxwell Malone

“The life of puppets […] is the dance of the fingers. Puppeteers of old—they say—would connect wires from their veins, feeding lifeblood to puppets to entice the spirits of the earth to enter them. Today, we do this with strings. You move, like so, and he moves. A thing is dead until it moves. You…
Haunted Passages: Two Poems by Romana Iorga

Fairy Tale After James Schuyler I heard a rooster crow three times this morning.What does it mean, whom have I betrayed?Each day I walk toward something with a shore,or else, with a clearing. Humans use treesto surround their emptiness, their viscous needfor each other. I think I may still be a human.In the forest, no…
“I Couldn’t Stop Looking,” a flash fiction by Lisa Korzeniowski for Haunted Passages

I am standing in the backyard in front of the shed. My brother is at the kitchen window, moths circling his screened-in face. “What do you see?” Seth says. “Come see for yourself,” I say. “No way. He told us not to go in there.” “He left the door open,” I say, digging my toes…
Haunted Passages: “Raynaud’s Berries,” a new short story by Tony Burgess

—for Carrie On our way to the emergency room, we realize it is the twelfth day in a row of peppering rain. Solid grey foam fills the ditches lining the field beside our route. Beyond and up the escarpment, who knows? Now on this road though, tires engage with surface in a ceaseless shushing and…
“Father Calls,” a Haunted Passages short fiction by Andrew Bertaina

Two weeks after my father dies in a freak accident, a dramatic fall while trimming fruit trees in his yard, he calls me in a dream. When the phone rings, I’m outside, watching a cloud of mosquitoes do a balletic dance around my shin. I’m drinking bourbon on the rocks, and the glass is sweating…
Connor Fisher: Two Poems for Haunted Passages

An Aphid Complex An aphid complex emerged frombeneath the burning barn. Horses were theprophets of agriculture. I threw a tractor overa phalanx of shells that, in their elation,carved elaborate, infinitesimal initialsinto the desolate arena of sand. My knife is in midair. I am jugglingthe brutal levees of a drowned city. The wellreflects an image of…
Two Poems for Haunted Passages by Annah Browning

On Reading the Unsolved Mysteries I no longer want to see the world. I want to hold a bouquet of aliens in my hand like violets and stare into their black eyes. I want to get dizzy falling in love with the probe. I want to be the compass that swings and swings, never resting anywhere. There is no grove I am setting my eyes toward, no monolith I believe. Stones stand under stars because that is…
Haunted Passages Poem: “Tangerine Dream” by Michael Sikkema

Michael Sikkema is a poet. He has a book forthcoming from Trembling Pillow Press, a book forthcoming from Alien Buddha Press, and a chapbook of sound poems and collages fresh out from Low Frequency Press. He enjoys correspondence about owl communication, sound studies, and raising pleasantly feral children at Michael.Sikkema@gmail.com. Image: healthclubnu.nl
“Catalog of Nameless Girls,” a short story by Madeline Vosch for Haunted Passages

I have been sleeping with a married man for the past few months. I know, I know. But hear me out: I have been lonely. Joe is barely married. Separated. Almost divorced. When I met him, his wife had already moved out, already taken their daughter to a new house on the other side of…