Nightmare Magazine, Issue 114 (March 2022) by Wendy N. Wagner

Author:Wendy N. Wagner
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Adamant Press
Published: 2022-02-17T21:50:30+00:00

©2022 by R.L. Meza.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

R.L. Meza is an author of horror fiction. She lives in a century-old Victorian house on the coast of northern California with her husband and the collection of strange animals they call family.

To learn more about the author and this story, read the Author Spotlight

Said the Carrion to the Corvus

Woody Dismukes | 212 words

Recently, it’s been hard not to feel consumed by outside forces. There’s always someone coming to take something from you. The taxman, the debt collector, familial relations, whomever. This poem is for those who have given everything.

—WD

How much meat is left

for you to suckle from

these bones? You’ve left none

for the earthfeeders,

nor the flesh flies.

Not a single strand

of mammalian hair

for the tineid moths.

My bones are cracked

and the marrow has leaked

through your downturned beak

and become the black of you.

You are no rook. No roughneck

nor roundtail. No hint of crest. Your song hard,

and mean. You steal the sky

a lesser raven, but the bloodsweat

calls you back. It is the mandibles

that betray your name.

What left do I have to give?

I have no life, no kin,

no kith. Dentine turned ivory.

All that was separate,

the me from the soil,

has evaporated under your lust.

My ribcage now

the tusks of the earth.

Yet, still

you pick . . .

pick . . .

pick . . .

for a thing that is not there.

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