Category: Poetry

Haunted Passages: “The Unhaunted Poem” by Kim Sousa

X-Files child, Ialways wanted to brush up against the paranormal.Grant me a final girl foggy day. Though, in this only and on-forever life, I never found any ghost outside the mirror. Only bare fruit trees,controlled burns, abandoned hives, their capped and long-dry combs. Only strangerswith cheeks I kiss out of obligation, not gentleness. Their go-with-God…
Bad Survivalist: Tam Nguyen’s attempted poem “2020’s Impressions”

Halfway through the year of 2020 1 About the flood season in 1978: My father’s boat was traveling to the drylands in the far South to collect some edible grass for the starving cows at home. The river was narrow enough for the melaleuca arms to remind him of guerrillas’ sneaky talks and gunfire. It…
Danny Caine: Three Flavortown Poems from Vol. 9

Last Will & Testament When I die bury me at Randall Park Mallbeside the pebbled fountain where coiny wateronce bubbled, by the stage where Tiffany sneakersonce danced and twirled. For the service set out rowsof Brookstone massage chairs so the whir of the Shiatsuhums as my Auntie Anne delivers a prayer through saltytears. Let her…
Louis Zieja: Three Ekphrastic Monster Movie Noises for Haunted Passages

Them Ants (’54)“The sounds the giant ants emit in the film were the calls of bird-voiced tree frogs mixed in with the calls of a wood thrush, hooded warbler, and red-bellied woodpecker.” —Them! (1954 Film) Wikipedia It’s a sound reminiscent of rot, of decay, of hunger,the realization that we are just caloriesfor an unknowable colony.…
Three Poems: Lee Hodge for Haunted Passages

HostageAfter Katie Peterson On the night I ended it the police had cordoned off every street surrounding the block to investigate a threat that had been called in on the house across the street from yours. Can’t turn down that road the neighbors had told me before I turned down the road. They pointed at…
Bad Survivalist Poem: “Let nothing touch the ground” by Sam Rush

The best way to treat bedbugs scream while screaming wait until you die / The best way move drive fast enough to outrun them they can’t fly if you run out of gas scream while you scream wait wait until you die let nothing touch the ground / The best way to treat bedbugs diatomaceous…
Poetry: “Acceptable Risk” by Tara Campbell

“Acceptable Risk” is a response to the “no-knock” police raid in Louisville on March 13 that ended in the shooting death of 26-year-old African-American EMT Breonna Taylor. Police say they knocked and identified themselves, but Walker and other witnesses in the building say they did not. The officers were not using body cameras. As reported…
Haunted Passages: Two Poems by Carolyn Supinka

Haunted House The haunted house does not require a history, but it needs a mouth: a previous, innocent tenant, someone to live to tell the tale. I can speak for its corners. Very lean and fine, alien landscapes of plateaus and dead red rivers spilling out behind, smoke of past lives burned and rising as…
Asa Montgomery: Three Poems from The Future

Like having your eyes sewn shut 1 Someone planted a treein my stomach. Roots tore through my ribs, limbs pokingunder my fingertips. Light splintered bark. My fingers felt the sun in the backs of human necks.Leaves brushed the backs of my lips. Invisible birds karee karee-ing,moths’ creaking their door hinge wings, leaving white dust in…