Malefic

A coal-black tar
and feathered clinging
to your soul—it croons the sigil
ouroboros gnawing
at the moon—aghast and
punctured, full—a rotting
gibbous rune—an end
of opalescence—
a stylus tipped
too soon—

(c)2021 by Sanguine Woods

(Tattoo Image: Pinterest. Photographer/artist unknown.)

Rag & Bone

What hope do you have?
he asked the man
holding the sacrificial lamb—it was
spotless not a
mark, virgin fleece
white as god-damned
snow. I know.
You’ve
heard
it all

before.

It curled at the corners,
pirate map—not Where to
pillage, loot, and rape—
subscriptio, titulus—those kinds of
things (there may have been an exchange of
old coins)—and
ink, not blood,
something darker, licked
the page—pitch or
tar, acrid smoking a mile
underneath the
dead forest
floor
where things grew
once,
but not

anymore.

(c)2020 by Sanguine Woods

(Photo: Pinterest)

A Poem a Day #8: “There’s a certain slant of light…” by Emily Dickinson

There’s a certain Slant of light,
Winter Afternoons –
That oppresses, like the Heft
Of Cathedral Tunes –

Heavenly Hurt, it gives us –
We can find no scar,
But internal difference –
Where the Meanings, are –

None may teach it – Any –
‘Tis the seal Despair –
An imperial affliction
Sent us of the Air –

When it comes, the Landscape listens –
Shadows – hold their breath –
When it goes, ’tis like the Distance
On the look of Death –

—

(Poem #320, The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson)

A Poem a Day—#2: “Design” by Robert Frost

Design

I found a dimpled spider, fat and white,
On a white heal-all, holding up a moth
Like a white piece of rigid satin cloth–
Assorted characters of death and blight
Mixed ready to begin the morning right,
Like the ingredients of a witch’s broth–
A snow-drop spider, a flower like a froth,
And dead wings carried like a paper kite.

What had that flower to do with being white,
The wayside blue and innocent heal-all?
What brought the kindred spider to that height,
Then steered the white moth thither in the night?
What but design of darkness to appall?–
If design govern in a thing so small.

—Robert Frost, 1936

“The Taper” by William Blake

(Pinterest)

“Night-Gaunts”—A Creepy Sonnet by H. P. Lovecraft—He Really Dreamed of These Things!

Out of what crypt they crawl, I cannot tell,
But every night I see the rubbery things,
Black, horned, and slender, with membranous wings,
They come in legions on the north wind’s swell
With obscene clutch that titillates and stings,
Snatching me off on monstrous voyagings
To grey worlds hidden deep in nightmare’s well.

Over the jagged peaks of Thok they sweep,
Heedless of all the cries I try to make,
And down the nether pits to that foul lake
Where the puffed shoggoths splash in doubtful sleep.
But ho! If only they would make some sound,
Or wear a face where faces should be found!

—H. P. Lovecraft

Above, left: “Night-Gaunts” by artist Les Edwards inspired by the HPL poem. Above, right: Another HPL-inspired illustration of the creatures, artist unknown.

“Let me, let me freeze again…”

Statue congelée de Lord Alfred Tennyson (classicarte/Tumblr).

Let me, let me,
Let me freeze again
Let me, let me
Freeze again to death. 

– Shakespeare, King Arthur: Act III, Scene 2: Cold Song (Cold Genius) – Henry Purcell

 

Détail de « Dante et Virgile » par William-Adolphe Bouguereau (1850)

(classicarte/Tumblr)

Reblog: One of the great independent presses, Undertow Books, hits the mark again! Look at this!

The Silent Garden: A New Journal of Esoteric Fabulism

From Michael Kelly, Undertow Books (http://www.undertowbooks.com/)

Dear Friends,

On behalf of the Silent Garden Collective, I will be publishing the inaugural volume of The Silent Garden: A Journal of Esoteric Fabulism.

The Silent Garden is a peer-reviewed journal, edited and curated by the Silent Garden Collective, a professional group of editors, writers, and scholars interested in exploring those liminal borderlands where darkness bends.

The Collective’s aim is to provide an annual journal of exceptional writing and art focussed on horror and the numinous, the fabulist, the uncanny, the weird, the gnostic, the avant-garde, the esoteric, and the dark interstices of the known and unknown world.

The Silent Garden Collective is an organic and changing group of editors. Each volume (assuming the first sells well enough) will be edited and curated by a different group. Thus, given the number of people potentially involved, they thought it prudent to form a Collective.

The book is currently in production, and should be available in August. Pricing and ordering information should be available soon. The amazing Table of Contents is listed below. If you want to be notified when it’s available, just drop me an e-mail and I will add you to the mailing list.

Thanks for the interest, folks. I think this is going to be a very special and unique project!

Specs

Deluxe square (8.5” X 8.5”) Hardcover, with interior color illustrations, printed on 70LB paper. Published by Undertow Books.

The inaugural volume of this very cool journal will feature the following:

Art

• Transcending the Grotesquerie: The Surreal Landscapes of David Whitlam

Essays

• “Translating The Ritual,” by J.T. Glover
• “The Raw Food Movement: Comparing Transformative Diets in Han Kang’s The Vegetarian (2015) and Julia Ducournau’s Raw (2016),” by V.H. Leslie
• “Unstitching the Patriarchy: A review of Camilla Grudova’s The Doll’s Alphabet,” by Rudrapriya Rathore
• “Cinema of the Body: The Politics of Performativity in Lars Von Trier’s Dogville and Yorgos Lanthimo’s Dogtooth,” by Angelos Koutsourakis

Poetry

• “Lincoln Hill,” by Daniel Mills
• “Deposition of Darkness,” by Mesándel Virtusio Arguelles (Translated by Kristine Ong Muslim)
• “Contortionist,” by Mesándel Virtusio Arguelles (Translated by Kristine Ong Muslim)

Fiction

• “Waystations of the High Night,” by Marcel Brion (Translated by Edward Gauvin)
• “Her Blood the Apples, Her Bones the Trees,” by Georgina Bruce
• “La Tierra Blanca,” by Maurizio Cometto (Translated by Rachel S. Cordasco)
• “Embolus of Cinnabar,” by Patricia Cram
• “Palisade,” by Brian Evenson
• “Under the Casket, A Beach!” by Nick Mamatas
• “The Other Tiger,” by Helen Marshall
• “Coruvorn” by Reggie Oliver
• “Blood and Smoke, Vinegar and Ashes” by D.P. Watt
• “The Palace of Force and Fire,” by Ron Weighell
• “Nox Una,” by Marian Womack

---

Read more, here, and buy this! Support Undertow Books!

https://www.thesilentgarden.com/

http://www.undertowbooks.com/2018/04/29/the-silent-garden/#comment-39909

Drawing Down—A Poem by Sanguine Woods, 2018

(Photo by aukjevanderwal.nl)

✨

Bequeath me sight not as it seems
A sphere of light to capture breath;
Come, toll the word of moons and beams—
Exhume the heft of youth-felt schemes.

Purvey the slice that leaves no scar—
A sliver of bewitchèd glass;
A drop to stir; enflame the pall—
Un bâton rouge pour faire l’étoile.

Encerclez! thou thornèd crown—
Each pented point a waning sun;
Le sang va embrasser le sol—
And name the circle ‘done’.

(C)2018 Sanguine Woods