poem Archives - The Stygian Lepus

April 1, 2024April 5, 2024

Word-Shopping, Part I by Julie Allyn Johnson

I’m a chimera,

I think,

though its meaning

is not yet known to me.

Even its pronunciation

falters inside my brain.

I want a SHIM-er-ah

sound to describe

who I am,

my perceived fancy,

my joie de vivre.

But my head is not

that of a lion.

Neither fire nor flames

sustain me.

I haven’t any tail.

No frame of goat.

I’m no illusion,

no one’s longing

ill-fated and shunned.

Just the one set of DNA:

I am no surviving twin.

Pegasus is agnostic

of my existence.

No monster, am I.

Though my behavior

is monstrous at times.

[Flips the page]

Chimney sweep, n. a person whose job is cleaning out the soot from chimneys.

Well. Well, well, well.

Julie Allyn Johnson

Julie Allyn Johnson is a sawyer's daughter from the American Midwest whose current obsession is tackling the rough and tumble sport of quilting and the accumulation of fabric. A Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net nominee, her poetry can be found in Star*Line, The Briar Cliff Review, Phantom Kangaroo, Lyrical Iowa, Moss Piglet, Cream Scene Carnival, Coffin Bell, The Lake, Haikuniverse, Chestnut Review and other journals. Julie enjoys photography and writing daily haiku, both of which can be found on her blog, A Sawyer’s Daughter.

March 30, 2024April 5, 2024

Carnivorous by Julie Allyn Johnson

I won’t bombard you

with my flesh-eating proclivities,

but old habits, as they say,

do die hard. My preference,

of course, would be for bodies

to remain soft and pliable,

incisors not being what they

once were back in the glorious day,

when it was nothing to tear a hunk

of human meat with a single swipe.

Julie Allyn Johnson

March 30, 2024April 5, 2024

Thievery by Lee Clark Zumpe

Tell me: Is it wrong to take the shoes of a dead man?

In another age, necessity was the mother of invention,

they claim—

but they didn’t live through the pandemic, did they?

They didn’t see the viral videos of first-wave victims

bleeding out over the Atlantic Ocean

on flights bound for North America.

They didn’t see metropolitan emergency rooms,

overflowing with sufferers,

desperate for treatment and guarantees.

They never read the increasingly unnerving headlines

publicizing curfews and proclaiming daily death tallies.

How those casualty figures mushroomed in the early days.

They never learned the unspoken secrets—

they never encountered a corpse shambling down the sidewalk

or recognized a friend or lover they’d watch die

knock on their door in the middle of the night

or crawl into bed with them

heavy with the stench of death.

It was one for the record books, that virus—

more lethal than the Black Death and the 1918 Spanish Flu combined—

killing off more than three quarters of the world’s population

and triggering an ongoing war with the walking dead

that may never end.

Society unravels, slowly.

The lucky ones—the ones with a natural immunity— are soldiers now.

Soldiers and scavengers and pilferers.

Necessity is the impulse behind thievery.

Lee Clark Zumpe

Lee Clark Zumpe, an entertainment editor with Tampa Bay Newspapers, earned his degree in English at the University of South Florida. He began writing poetry and fiction in the early 1990s. His work has regularly appeared in a variety of literary journals and genre magazines over the last two decades. Publication credits include Tiferet, Zillah, The Ugly Tree, Modern Drunkard Magazine, Red Owl, Jones Av., Main Street Rag, Space & Time, Mythic Delirium and Weird Tales. Lee lives on the west coast of Florida with his wife and daughter.

March 30, 2024April 5, 2024

Death of the Sea by Corinne Pollard

I am cursed—

mortal by day,

monster by night,

trapped on the seaway,

and losing the light.

I am thirst,

compelled to drink

every deep sea.

If disturbed, I’ll sink

ships, no escapees.

I am she,

a monstrous-thirst,

draining, sucking

until no cloudburst

rains, succumbing

to my wasteland reign.

Corinne Pollard

Corinne Pollard is a disabled writer from West Yorkshire, UK, published in Sirens Call, Black Hare Press, Three Cousins Publishing, Trembling with Fear, World of Myth, and Paragraph Planet. Also, Corinne is co-editor for the Yorkshire anthology Aire Reflections with her dark stories and poetry inside. With a degree in English Lit and Creative Writing, Corinne has always enjoyed the world of dark fantasy. Aside from writing, Corinne enjoys metal music, visiting graveyards, and shopping for books to read.