PACING

by John Grey

By day,

you pace the many rooms

of the old manor.

At night,

you blow out the bedside candle,

dark clouds encumber the high window

and, as you lie back on your pillow,

pull the blanket up to the crest of your chin,

it’s time for another kind of pacing.

Your mind is the floor this time.

Your memory provides the footsteps.

As does your guilt.

And the ghosts.

Back and forth,

back and forth,

by the time you fall asleep,

your evil history

has worn a hole in your head.

John Grey is an Australian poet, US resident, recently published in Stand, Santa Fe Literary Review, and Lost Pilots. Latest books, Between Two Fires, Covert, and Memory Outside the Head, are available through Amazon. Work upcoming in the Seventh Quarry, La Presa, and California Quarterly.

Cindy Rosmus originally hails from the Ironbound section of Newark, NJ, once voted the “unfriendliest city on the planet.” She talks like Anybodys from West Side Story and everybody from Saturday Night Fever. Her noir/horror/bizarro stories have been published in the coolest places, such as Shotgun Honey; Megazine; Dark Dossier; The Rye Whiskey Review, Under the Bleachers, and Rock and a Hard Place. She is the editor/art director of Yellow Mama and the art director of Black Petals. She’s published seven collections of short stories. Cindy is a Gemini, a Christian, and an animal rights advocate. She has recently branched out into photo illustration.