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Cottonmouth
Hillary
Lyon
your tears are salty
and sweet to him
and he’s so very thirsty
that heaviness in your chest
—his embrace squeezing
the very life out of you
one delicious drop
at a time when your dreams
are at their most melancholy
and monstrous
like his namesake snake
in the deepest southern swamp
no wonder you wake
shaken and slack and stupefied
and oh so very very thirsty
In the Flickering
Hillary
Lyon
fire light or fluorescent light
both distort the true
edges of your worldview
one makes a bland soup
of all shadows cast
by inanimate objects
one makes a secret sauce
of your misplaced memories
spicy to the point
of pain recovered
only when you remember
the cold angel standing
on your porch with moonlight
cascading off the sharp stone
lines
of his cheekbones and carved
lips
the statue who opened his hand
to give you the solemn message found
in searing swirling dust and
smoldering ashes
Ode to the Face on
the Missing Person Poster
Hillary
Lyon
sometimes innocent wandering
ends in screaming
disturbing the water
a murky figure
speaks words
incomprehensible
to the beloved’s ear
it’s the story old wives
told
a thousand times before
it’s an anonymous letter
accusing
with no real evidence
to prove that something
anything and everything was
wrong
desperate to explain
why she wandered off alone
into the evening’s winter
rain
Hillary
Lyon, Lyonwrite@gmail.com, who wrote BP #87’s “There’s
an App for
That” tale and the 3-poem set, “Cottonmouth,” “In the Flickering,” and “Ode to
the Face on the Missing Person Poster” (+ BP #85’s “Bottle Music,” BP #83’s
“Strange Music Follows Her Everywhere,” and BP #78’s “The Lucky Break”) lives
in southern Arizona, where she founded and still edits poetry journals for
Subsynchronous Press, an Arizona-based independent
poetry publisher. An SFPA Rhysling Award nominated poet, her poems have
appeared in publications such as Eternal Haunted Summer, Illumen,
Scfifaikuest, Farther Stars Than These, Disturbed Digest, and
Dreams & Nightmares, as well as numerous anthologies. When not
writing, she creates illustrations for horror and pulp fiction publications.
Her stories have appeared in 365
Tomorrows, Eternal Haunted Summer,
Night to Dawn, The Sirens Call,
Trembling with Fear, Yellow
Mama, and numerous horror anthologies such as Alternate Hilarities 5: One
Star Reviews of the Afterlife, Fright
Mare, More Tales from the Blue Gonk
Cafe, My American Nightmare, Night in New Orleans: Bizarre Beats
from the Big Easy, Postcard Shorts, Stories from the Graveyard,
Surreal Nightmares II, and White
Noise & Ouija Boards. She
also hand-paints boxes and furniture in the colorful Dia de los Muertos style.
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