Dark Poetry
“The Other Brother”
   By Stephanie Smith


A headless corpse lies on the floor
A heedless child cries for his
mother to chase the dreams away
He hides in the corner sucking blood off his thumb
as magical spells seep from her tattered robe
The air screams of sulfur and sin as the
corpse spits out her other son—
her precious son—
whose soul has been lodged in a nightmare
Shit sticks to his hair
His mouth oozes ichorous stories to tell
He smells like a century of
darkness and plague and memory
as he smiles and points a slimy
finger at his twin brother
who, without a single stutter,
recites an incantation
that sends him straight to Hell
“The Persistence of Flesh”
           By Stephanie Smith


I was a cannibal
persisting on the meat
of existence that hid
behind bones of the dead

Rotting strings of sinew
streamed down the riverbed
leading to where we all
go to in the end

I could have played the martyr and
given myself up to the worms,
unzipped this skin,
exposed the truth
But the womb was cold from where I came
and the flesh had kept my insides warm            
“She”
By Stephanie Smith


She is the smoke behind the mirror
The fate of us all
The empty pages in our never-ending story
She is the sediment beneath our feet
The hollow sound of heartbeats
and life’s last gasp of breath
She is the name dripping from sinners’ lips
before execution
She is the devil in the flesh
She is the tale told around campfires
The ghost who haunts the night
She is the sweet echo of our demise
The eviscerated victim of circumstance
She is the angel who leads us not into temptation
but delivers us into the cold consoling arms of darkness
each time we close our eyes
Poetry by Stephanie Smith
To read other short stories,
click one of the titles below.
For poetry by Ed
Pessalano, A.J.
Huffman and Sierra
Grice, click here

For poetry by
Katherine Givens and
Ashley Dioses, click
here

For poetry by
Stephanie Smith, click
here