The Ladies of Horror
Picture-Prompt Writing Challenge!

The Sound of Music 
by Marge Simon 

On a sandy Sahara shore skirting the Mediterranean, a mother is suspended just above her shadow. Her children rise from her shadow. They know forever, for they have come and gone times over. Listen, say the children, there’s music everywhere.  Her babies are new, but already they know their mother needs sustenance. They scatter to find what they hear and return bringing the music where they find it: the thrumming of drums deep in the jungle, the squawk of brightly colored birds; butterfly wings beating in a field, the gentle notes of goldfish in a pond, the drone of bees, the beating of human hearts. Her children go out and return many times to feed her, until all African lifeforms are sucked dead of sound. Continuing their mission, the children spread to all corners of the earth until all the music has been gathered and sounds of life have ceased. When their mother’s needs are satisfied, they disperse into the stars to begin their cycle on other worlds of blue and green.

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Fiction © Copyright Marge Simon
Image courtesy of Pixabay.com 

More from Marge Simon:

Victims
by Marge Simon and‎ Mary Turzillo

The title of this collection sets you up for the surprise of lyrical stories of victimizations with unexpected endings for the villains. Be ready to have your heart opened and cheer for perceived victims, human (made and unmade) and other life forms, victorious in the hands of these two award-winning poets. —Linda D. Addison, award-winning author, HWA Lifetime Achievement Award recipient and SFPA Grand Master.

Across histories and cultures and from Auschwitz to Babylon this book leaves you questioning who are the victims, and regardless of your conclusion you’re likely to get throat-punched. This is horror where everyone has a knife, and is ready to deliver this message: “Remember, you are always guilty. —Herb Kauderer, author of Fragments from the Book of the After-Dead.

Simon and Turzillo have only gone and startled me again. What a collection! Brutal. Beautiful. This quiver of poems strikes with the unflinching truth of persecution and oppression as seen through the lens of feminism. Prepare to come away bruised and yet strangely bolstered by Victims, a symphony of sadness orchestrated by two masters of dark poetry. —Lee Murray, Bram Stoker and Shirley Jackson Award-winner.

This is one of the braver dark poetry collections I’ve seen in a while. Horror poets generally employ victims in their work, but the focus is generally on the Evil. Turning the camera the other way is unusual, unsettling, emotionally risky, and surprisingly effective. From their stark opening take on Pygmalion, to the ending poem about the wasted life of Stateira of Persia, this powerful collection teases apart an impressive number of the threads of victimhood. Some are the usual cases, but quite a few are surprises, or reversals, or cases with unexpected layers. There is nothing repetitive about this collection. —Timons Esaias, winner of the Asimov’s Readers’ Award and the Winter Anthology Contest

Available on Amazon!