Michael Tugendhat won the 2014 Dark Poetry Scholarship offered by the Horror Writers Association. His first book of horror poems is forthcoming (February 2015) from James Ward Kirk. He has had work appear or accepted for publication inMidnight Echo Magazine, Beyond Borderlands, Morpheus Tales #24 and elsewhere.

 

For Poe

By Michael Tugendhat

 

Ashore to find the autonomy of the word

should. As in, should I remove

 

the sciatica from the morsel of my condensation

my way of raining into the heart of a field.

 

Braying against the side of a pontoon boat, the twinning—

headstones of shore, your. Black sky where the pumpkins

 

of the cemetery have been spayed from their stems.

October rises, alive and under heaven.

 

Talk of sheep, swoons of a nearby sea.

C is the letter it all began with

 

Canopus of Carina, may shine your

heart out in the wine of the sky.

 

To mine come Poe, startle the sheen

and grease that comes with the fragment

 

`       of this Roman stone.