The October Editor's Pick Poet is Alec Kowalczyk

Please feel free to email Alec at: mirrorrim@usa.net

HORROR OF DRACULA

1958…exiting the midnight screening alone from this profoundly disquieting movie.
Every clutching tree limb overhead.
Every shadow nested within another shadow nested within another shadow.
Every creeping movement outside isolated discs of spotlight from the sparely spaced streetlamps.
Shape-shifted into something significantly more unpleasant.
As the endless walk just began…to reach the distant refuge that was the outpost of home.

POWERED

His darkest times…

In the close confines
of a non-illuminated room

He watches the eerie glow
from a ship in a bottle
waxing progressively

Until one evening
the vessel begins to list

And he moves out into night
and acts accordingly.

MAUSOLEUM

Trying to imagine the days
when it was a long journey
by horse and carriage to visit
a dear departed loved one.
Spending the better part
of the day, because it was such
a long journey. Perhaps having
a bit of lunch seated
at the wrought iron table
set within the chamber.
Watching the intense colors
saturating the stained glass
windows drain gradually
anemic as the sky light
dimmed. Driving down
the long winding avenues
of tombstones as the bell tolled,
announcing that the gates
to the cemetery would soon
close…echoing the adage,
it is later than you think.

PALMATE

The corridor leading to the front hallway.
The doorway all around
beveled glass transom and sidelights.
The circular drive outside
and in the disc of lawn enclosed.
A dwarf palm tree its large leaves like large fingers.
Motioning in the static stillness of the air.
Beckoning from a world parallel with this world
and nested within worlds.

Alec B. Kowalczyk is a native of South Troy, New York, a civil engineer by day, with an interest in the mechanics of poetry. His work has been published in 69 Flavors of Paranoia, Semaphore Magazine, Pif Magazine, ChiZine, Yellow Mama and others, winning a Dark Animus award for poetry. Snark Publishing released his chapbook titled Shadow and Substance.