Ladies of Horror Flash Project – #Horror #author Sheikha A. @Darc_Nina #LoH #fiction

The Ladies of Horror
Picture-Prompt Writing Challenge!

Eurydice’s Letter
by Sheikha A.

Daughter,

Streak my words with the light

of your mind. I didn’t raise

you to be a pomegranate

eating she-Hades. The pout

of your lips is borrowed

anemone. It’s hard to forgive

your resemblance to Persephone,

especially when being birth

from escorts of her illusions.

She could never anyway produce

a progeny apart from the vines

of her illustrious trails

those that strung like willing

strings on hell’s harps. I taught

you of Saturn’s furies

yet the mass of heat

and carnal lust you wooed.

We are underdogs,

our lips black from relishing

warrior souls, drinking their

cold, cobalt radiations

like the last rays of a winter

solstice’s sun, the same bottle

of multiple cries of defeat

were the only words you heard

growing up in vast hollow

bodies of ghosts.

I was in the war that killed

your father; the ruler of all things

whole and burning. Your phallic

melodies are serpent kisses

like Hades’ music:

tamer of Black Holes.

Do you see my right foot

different from the left

ascending as an unbreakable

helix. You have learnt well to

ride the unsaddled back

of a fire-comet.

Do you remember me

the flaring scintilla

on wolf-moon nights

while you crushed seeds

of red juices between

your teeth, eyes aglow

like onyx-stillness of

depthless seas. When I came

knocking on your window

with a piece of penitence

from Apollo’s bejewelled instrument,

your hair turned to snow.

Everything about your milk-

curdled face was a lyre,

the necks of many you broke

as toys. Notes strumming

like the snores of Cerberus.

And your head earless.

More from author Sheikha A.:

Nyctophiliac Confessions:
Poems by Sheikha A. and Suvojit Banerjee

“The night is cold enough to inspire poetry,” says Sheikha A. in her poem, “Reading My Bones.” This is the basis of Nyctophiliac Confessions – poems that are introspective and luminal, poems that require a certain amount of silence and space to be fully formed and appreciated. Reading these poems, I imagined that they were the kind of poems that assert themselves unbidden during a bout of insomnia. (A nyctophiliac being someone who loves the night or loves darkness).

Nyctophiliac Confessions is the 17th installment of Praxis’ chapbook series and contains twenty-six poems written by two poets, Sheikha A. and Suvojit Banerjee, interspersed with abstract paintings by Robert Rhodes.

Available Here!

2 Responses to Ladies of Horror Flash Project – #Horror #author Sheikha A. @Darc_Nina #LoH #fiction

Marge Simon says:

August 26, 2022 at 4:52 pm

Cruel and beautiful at once, from its inception; I love these lines: your lips black from relishing /warrior souls, drinking their
cold, cobalt radiations

alexgrehyauthor says:

August 26, 2022 at 5:51 pm

I love writing that has roots in the classics – this is so richly told and full of intrigue – great work.