Dark Poetry



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Bane

By Donna Dallas


I should sleep

yet I keep staring at the dead man

his toothless grin

black and empty

when I reach to close the blinds

my hand bursts through his windpipe


What’s done is done

yet there he lingers

sprays of rainbow speckle

through his skin

in the drawn sunlight

fingernails curled under

as he taps in annoyance

when I pay no attention

or I am sidetracked

with the business of things

that need to be done


The dead man stands

awkwardly straight

a spindle spine of sorts

such an unfortunate sadness

swells in his marbled eyes

I pray

let the dead bury their dead


When I awake

he is seated trans-like

crossed legs

in his meditative state

at bedtime I take sleeping pills

as I swallow them

I see the dead man

from the corner of my eye

shake his head

I wish I had a better set up

to offer

when I see him cry

I can almost hear his howling woes

bend the air like a heat stroke

I’m not giving them up - the pills


All I have

pills and a dead guy

in a rickety house

waiting for the dead

to bury their dead



Love Me Hideously

By Donna Dallas


I hold your trembling hand

as we leap

into this blackened trench


You say this is bad

I say we are fools

eat the bread today

for tomorrow it could be moldy

or stolen

tomorrow may not arrive


The trench deepens

as we sift through bones

of the dead

pick a button or two

from some corpse’s

matted and shredded garments

a souvenir

to remind us

of this journey

we will never return from



About Donna Dallas: I studied Creative Writing and Philosophy at NYU’s Gallatin School and was lucky enough to study under William Packard, founder and editor of the New York Quarterly. Lately, I am found in Gathering of Tribes, Horror Sleaze Trash, Beatnik Cowboy and The Opiate. I serve on the editorial team for New York Quarterly.


On A Rubber Ball Found In A Grave Yard

By Lamont Turner



He sleeps and yet he hears,

and hungers for a taste,

aware that should he rise and feast

no suspicion would be placed

upon the corpse beneath the stone,

too ancient to be traced,

to sinister lore to hoary tomes

about one dead who still yet roams

to drink the blood of children.


The bouncing of a ball!

She lifts the worm worn pall,

and whose dead lips Satan has kissed

to enshroud the child who tries to call,

but makes no sound, no whimper at all,

and leaves for the wind his scarlet ball

to toss against the silent stones

above the silent graves.



About Lamont Turner: Lamont A. Turner is a New Orleans area writer and father of four whose stories and poems have appeared in numerous magazines and anthologies.

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In the Graveyard, Decomposing

By LindaAnn LoSchiavo



Stealth is my friend once again. Unnoticed at lock-up time, I’m lingering among crosses set in

even rows. The gridlock of grim. Typical visitor hours are too hectic, rife with bald human

moments ― slumping shoulders mantled in misery. All the ways bereavement can scaffold

joy. A boneyard devoid of human sounds is preferable. Aware of the final, fading pulses of

light, I apostrophe myself into the dark and begin. Crunching frost-crisped leaves underfoot

produces a dry crackle like ghosts coughing. I approach one particular monument arrayed in its

upright finery of euphemisms, letters loud with an insistence to be, unscrew a clear solution, and

begin my work. Decomposing, I become contradiction’s champion. Shedding an edge of slate,

erasing a name, obliterating the expected encomiums. Erasure pounces as acid withers the words

a line at a time, returning the stone to its gall of quiet lovelessness. In life, he quietly murdered

his first wife, dropped my sister’s corpse from his private plane like earth’s least precious stone,

then kept his crimes buried by decorating his life with diplomas and philanthropy. Her remains

were never found, never graced a morgue slab nor satin-lined coffin. But tonight I feel her spirit

humming, numinous as a melody from warped violins.


cemetery duty

stiffness in my knees

dissipating fog



About LindaAnn LoSchiavo: Native New Yorker LindaAnn LoSchiavo, a Pushcart Prize, Rhysling Award, Best of the Net, and Dwarf Stars nominee, is a member of SFPA, The British Fantasy Society, and The Dramatists Guild. Elgin Award winner "A Route Obscure and Lonely," "Concupiscent Consumption," "Women Who Were Warned," Firecracker and IPPY Award nominee "Messengers of the Macabre" [co-written with David Davies], and "Apprenticed to the Night" [Beacon Books, 2023] are her latest poetry titles.