by JESSICA VAN DE KEMP
|
You're an old man smoking vetch. You fetch and carry, you seed and metal. Under the earth, there are rivers and shade – a white mist that clings to you like belladonna. You sit with your hot words at the top of the stairs. Your grave is a deep one. The hour hits the pit of a plum, sour and supple. In your mouth is an iron pill (don't let on to the others that you're anemic). The cardinals know where you vacation, spot my window, and dive incantations into your muddy ingress. (Persephone bores holes into your skull and taps the sugar. She holds the bag in the daylight when you're thirty, maybe forty. It takes another hour at the top of the stairs before the holes are as big as plum seeds and you can't heal yourself.) |
Jessica Van de Kemp, (BA, B.Ed, MA) is a member of the Ontario College of Teachers. Her poetry and short fiction have appeared in Haiku for Lovers (Buttontapper Press, 2013), The Danforth Review, Vallum, Branch Magazine, The Steel Chisel, Ditch, The Fieldstone Review, Halcyon, In Parentheses, Bitterzoet Magazine, Mint Magazine, Gravel Magazine, The Studio Voice, Wilde Magazine,Cactus Heart, The Mackinac, Miracle E-Zine, and The Wayfarer. Her bonbon chapbook, Four-Coloured Memory, is forthcoming from Bitterzoet Press.
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.