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

The Ladies of Horror
Picture-Prompt Writing Challenge!

Venus, As Corpse Tree
by Sheikha A.

for Moon in Libra

Lovers etch their names on her –

her face, garden of dead butterflies.

They throng and hurl – yearning

for union with unnatural mates.

The eclipse lingers longer than usual:

what the universe hides is unknown.

She disrobes their seams – undo shadow –

they’ll never know what became of them.

She was awakened by one of them

and has never since slept. Her leaves

grow wings on antlers – her branches –

deforming under weight of their graves.

She exhales red fumes of hypnosis:

what the universe absorbs is unseen.

They come for her sap – potion of love –

her wispy whispers ebbing slow haze.

One of them saw she planted moths;

mate them to her roots for fresh breed.

Before they could revolt, they were tied

to her intent. At the peak of the eclipse,

she releases eggs – echoes of birth:

what the universe hears is untold.

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!