FREQ / Obscura Fantastica

By the gate I broke the slate   Laid across the mouths of eight;   Something stirred beneath the bier:   Come, my dear. Eight, it seemed, had tongues of …

1 Nell slept. The latch grew warm beneath her cheek.   The pillow nursed a furrow in its seam.   Keep still, the ticking said.   She'd put away the d…

Witch of the unbroken note—   warm brass against the teeth,   a sweetness with enough weight in it    to lean on—   let me come closer.   Your neck takes …

YOU [ Do not drain the dark beneath my tongue. When I turn my face, turn down the lamp. ] I [ I turn the lamp down. In its glass the wire kneels red; your …

Come, remainder caught beneath the nail;   come through the sheet that will not lift from my hand.   Take the paper; leave the wrist.   If the lower lin…

For you who will examine the lower vault: before the lime, which thickens on the staple and flowers where the linen enters stone, can bury the distincti…

I To you who take the watch, I leave this slate: The feral cats lie tier on tier at night; The mushroom gills are ribbed with threads of light Reflected …

The marrow relay matches bone to bone. A pressure at my wrist selects a throat below the deck; the shock that should be mine arrives there, pulse for pu…

Yes, those are teeth. Last week they were pale bumps under the lip. I kept putting up the picture where your mouth held nothing but the pink of itself. Pe…

The packets came to County Receiving in carbon sleeves of toe tags, blue-black flakes sweating backward through names no kin had claimed. Bell, night cle…