The Ladies of Horror
Picture-Prompt Writing Challenge!
Visions through the Storm Bird’s Eye
by Marge Simon
A path lined in stones
the boy has been walking many days
guitar slung over his back
he came here to find
the song at the end of the world
.
a twisted tree on a beach
a girl stands beneath its branches
she wants to climb it,
to know what can be seen
from that vantage
.
a transparent sphere
lit by an inner glow
reveals a suspended cage
holding a strange bird
singing to the dark
.
the boy with the guitar
comes upon a sea aflame,
sees time as a warped disk
broken lives within bars
but he has found his song
.
The girl thinks it’s only a dream,
yet she remembers sitting on the branch
of the twisted tree, the smell of the sea,
the wind whipping her hair,
and she can see the world forever
Fiction © Copyright Marge Simon
Image courtesy of Pixabay.com
More from Marge Simon:
Victims
by
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
Spreading the Writer's Word 
Love this – so lyrical yet dark and surreal
An eerie and beautiful poem.