The August Selected Poet is Stephanie Smith
Please feel free to email Stephanie at: imajican1978@yahoo.com
SUMMER TWILIGHTS
you remember
summer twilights
hiding under picnic tables
and behind backyard sheds
mingling with vampires in the trees
and reading Stephen King by candlelight
because the boogeyman is real
to a nine year-old
and the neighbors
are not what they seem
THE DEATH MAIDEN
the death maiden kisses the moon
her hair smells like waste
dress tattered and caked
with dirt from a grave
the delicate bone beneath her skin
quivers with each thought of the downfall
before sunrise she
sang today is beauty
with innocent face
said life and death sit side by side
her dance of existence
was cheery and lively
but inside I knew she was nervous
she gave me flowers
that grew along a river bank
where it rained all night
tears from the moon
I think of the burden
she’ll be carrying
very soon
CITY OF THE DEAD
Here in this city of the
dead we cast wishes into
the suicidal fountain
On hot summer days you
can smell the flesh from the
citizens who stroll
down sidewalks of bone
In this city there are morgues
on every street corner
and maggot-filled dreams crawl in
the minds of those who live here,
calling us to the grave
A CHOICE
The angels came to wash my face
And falling: a thousand drops
of crimson tears on my sleeve
All alone on the mountain,
posed at the edge
with tattered wings
perceiving an empty dream,
I was given two choices:
to feel again
or join the angels
who no longer sing in their
choirs but ravage the night
with bloody bird claws
I chose the latter
THE SLEEPWALKER
Do you flow towards him,
towards the drink that
drives the nightmares away?
Do your dreams deceive you,
pulling cobwebs over your eyes,
realizing life was nothing more
than the diary of a somnambulist?
Stephanie Smith is a poet and writer hailing from Pennsylvania. Her work has appeared in such publications as Dark Fire Fiction, Eviscerator Heaven, House of Horror, Niteblade, Not One of Us, The Horror Zine, and Paper Crow. You can find her poetry in the Horror Zine's first anthology And Now the Nightmare Begins HERE.
