Poetry

Crossroads

This poem was inspired by folklore about devils and stories I’ve heard about The Devil visiting various communities. I used mistranslations of different cryptid lore and paired it with English and Mi’kmaw language—as Mi’kmaq is a verb-based language, it’s interesting to me to bring it into a genre where objects and subjects are alive and, sometimes, supernaturally alive.

In Nov. 2021 (Issue 110)

Poetry

Every Night and All

by Sonya Taaffe

I wrote this poem in a quarantine October; I wish the year that followed had made it a period piece. The title comes from the refrain of the “Lyke Wake Dirge,” which I learned as a child from the singing of Buffy Sainte-Marie and which has threaded through my own work ever since. Years after the fact, I discovered she was singing a variation on the classical arrangement by Benjamin Britten, but as much as I admire the eerie lilt of Peter Pears’ famously dry white tenor, less like the living waking the dead than one ghost calling another down, the old sistrum jangle behind Sainte-Marie terrified me.

In Oct. 2021 (Issue 109)

Poetry

The Returned

by Stephanie M. Wytovich

I’m deeply inspired by the dark surrealist photography of Christopher McKenney. His work is ethereal, haunting, and filled with dread and the onset of violence. When I was writing “The Returned,” I asked myself what the creatures and specters in his photographs were saying, and as I expected, each one had a terrifying tale to […]

In July 2021 (Issue 106)

Poetry

Julia, Forever

by Eugie Foster

I’m very grateful to share this poem from Eugie Foster, and wish I could have worked with her in person. Thanks so much to Alex Hofelich for connecting Nightmare to this dark little treasure. —WNW

In May 2021 (Issue 104)

Poetry

Modern Promethea

by Meg Elison

I was thinking about the power of Frankenstein not to raise the dead and become like god, but to redress the unjust nature of death (femicide in particular) to make god irrelevant. I was thinking about how not all women bear children, and some of us make people in other ways. How we all make each other. How we’re all riding the lightning, just staying alive. And then there was a poem.

In Mar. 2021 (Issue 102)

Poetry

The Girl with the Voice Made of Stone

by Anuel Rodriguez

This poem came about after reading more of Aileen Wuornos’ story and thinking of the ways society makes monsters out of victims. It is my first attempt at a dark fairy tale in verse. —AR I. climbed out of an abandoned car deep in a forest in Michigan after sleeping through another cold night alone. […]

In Feb. 2021 (Issue 101)