full screen background image
         
  Table of contents Issue Twenty-two THE SCOURGE OF THE BLUNT AND DUMB

by JAMES ROBERT RUDOLPH
Home  
   
 

Breeding in frog hollows
where evolution stalls in brackish gulleys,
unlearned biology bears creatures
with protoplasm, viscous with familiarity,
to speak in tongues, drawled and gibbered.

With spiny backs and poison sacs
they range in widening circles bringing
pustular afflictions to the smooth-skinned
long unprotected against backwater bugs,
old and few-celled.

Thick with simple purpose
this herd of brain stems
will blink unknowing when
the transecting meteor
scorches an arc.



   
   

 

endmark



James Robert Rudolph is retired after a busy career in healthcare and education in Minneapolis, having returned to old haunts in northern New Mexico. He believes in old-style magical realism, inspired by the Sangrede Cristo Mountains, the high desert, and the deep, broad sky of the American mountain west. Creatively he aspires to the crafting of work that expresses honest experience in beautiful language, complex or simple, as serves the work’s purpose. His poems have appeared in The Artistic Muse, Mad Swirl, Black Heart Magazine, Poetry Pacific, and Poetry Super Highway, among others.



The authors published at HelloHorror retain all rights to their work. For permission to quote from a particular piece, or to reprint, contact the editors who will forward the request. All content on the web site is protected under copyright law.