Theme 05: “Ghosts”
Ghost Woman
Digital Art by Terry Brinkman
Terry Brinkman has been painting for over 50 years. Terry has had art in shows in Salt Lake City, and Odgen Utah.
Three Poems
Poetry by L. Acadia
“I am alone, tonight / (or so I thought) / yet feel a shift / echo of—”
Ghosts of Summer
Fiction by Abby Kozal
“You wonder how long he’d been stuck in this house by himself, how many years he’d spent pacing up and down the hallways, how many steps it took to imprint his waterlogged bootprints into the floor…”
The Christmas Ghost Writer
Flash Fiction by M.D. Smith
“If he was going to write the greatest Christmas ghost story ever told, he’d first have to clean up after the living.”
Three Poems
Poetry by Suellen Wedmore
“Sometimes even a town falls in upon itself, / but in spring, when the dead wander at night, / you may find its abandoned heart, toughened / by tears…”
The Dead Hold a Party
Flash Fiction by Norbert Kovacs
“The most we could do now was wish to experience those things as our earthly selves again, however happy we were at the mansion.”
The Corpse Seeker’s Picnic
Fiction by Ian Johnson
“I freshened the duct tape, the bandages, his bucket. I cupped his matted fontanelle and bottle-fed him Lucozade, his impotent smashed hands guiding his wants.”
Two Poems
Poetry by John Grey
“The night is a machine – / not of gears but of stars clicking into place. / From its end a woman rises – / broom between her knees, hair stiff as wire. / Guided by phantoms, / she floats between the stars.”
All Hallow’s Eve
Digital Art by Wendy Lou Schmidt
Wendy Lou Schmidt, lives in Appleton, Wisconsin. She is a published author and mixed media artist.
London Looter’s Week February ‘24
by Athena Melliar
“I saw ghosts…at the Erdem show,…and they saw me”
Bird of Paradise
Poetry by Christian Cacibauda
“The dead, with their elisions, / have told us all they’re going to, / as sure as she—with one distraught decision— / alighted on those foreign shores / that heave back only echoes—never swimmers.”
Monarchs
Flash Fiction by Pawel Grajnert
“They fill up the beach and cover the rocks. Land on every tree branch. Blade of dune grass. Get caught in spider webs and hair. Get smashed under foot, squish through toes of children failing to hide. Whole wings trapped as bookmarks of this day. ”
Three Poems
Poetry by Phillip McGough
“Snow swirled through the doorway / though the door had not opened. / He left no footprints. The wine remained half-drunk. / The children asked, / Was he real? / And the elders whispered, / Perhaps more real than us.”
Samhain Dogs
Micro-fiction by Patrick Johnston
“…the ululation hits my bones like old rocks / and the Samhain dogs howl.”
Perfect Stranger
CNF by Vanessa Blakeslee
“I will never know what truly happened that long-ago day in August of 2012. I went on to write and publish my first books, and now and then I think of the stranger on the train and his warnings of the near future.”
RII, V.v. 31
Poetry by K.A. Keckler
“…you confess worries through lovely / lips and the tongue / I once held in my mouth like a / Samhain prayer.”
Shades
Fiction by Chris Negri
“Ah, there it is, the world is turning black at last. I can feel my eyes becoming jelly-like and pouring out, spilling down over my lips. Mmm. The sound is going now, a little at a time, a sort of soft ring settling. The space that was my mouth is full and dry and vacant.”
A Cold day in Hell
Digital Art by Edward Michael Supranowicz
Offering
Fiction by B.F. Vega
“The offerings sat on cracked stone…The tiny cemetery was deserted, other than the Virgin statue and me.
Three Poems
Poetry by Ron Riekki
“it was the witching hour, / midnight, / the hour of skulls, / noon for idiots, / the fog of warts, / thirteen o’clock, / Ang oras sang pagpang-witch / as they say in Hiligaynon, / La hora de las brujas / as they say in the language of el Día de los Muertos…”