There were only a few things he remembered from before that day. One was him and Holly in the bath. Their mother had given them a pack of foam letters. It had the letters A to Z and the numbers zero to nine, all in bright colors like a bag of Skittles. He was five, Holly six. Someone— Holly, their mother?—wrote, DAVE IS NO 1, on the pale tile of the bathroom wall.

Hao played guzheng even though you could hardly make out any of the notes from vehicles rolling past or the local vendors touting their soy milk as the “freshest on the street.” Still, I liked to watch Hao pluck and strum the strings like he could extract secrets from the hollow box.

Emma twists the thin band of gold around her finger and eases it over her swollen knuckle to drop into the pocket of her cardigan. She dips her hand in the kitchen sink to test the water’s temperature. The sharp lemon of the dish detergent prickles against her nose, and she plunges the greasy pan into the scalding water to soak.

There is a ghost in the playroom, but no one believes me. I doubt they even heard me suggest the idea, sensational though it was. My voice has become dull background noise, something to be ignored like the drone of a television commercial or the cacophonous hum of a barful of blathering strangers.

I have attended more poetry readings than any horror-writing, non-poet alive. I have survived Snodgrass, Wilber, Gioa, Feinstein, Wakoski, Clampett, Auden, Leithauser, Cummings, Pinsky, Brodsky, Allen, Solter, Morgan, Strand, Peacock... still reasonably intact (if not necessarily unimpaired), and I consider myself somewhat of an expert on the subject.

The sun had other plans that day. It usually watched over us when we trudged, but that afternoon it decided we were old enough and did not need a babysitter. If I looked closely enough, I could still see it peeking through the clouds. I suppose it still didn’t trust us completely. You stared up too, and I wondered if you were thinking about the clouds and if we should have gone trekking because I thought we should.

To say I never noticed the fangs would be a lie. I saw them on our very first date—if you could even call it that. We were at a backyard party, and you convinced me to make use of the moonlight. Our friends were drinking, laughter mingling with music, the air sweetened by cigarette smoke.

Amor, the moon (your favorite silver, pocket mirror) isn’t above the black trees anymore.

in a language made for the living, I find there are no words for this: how it feels to be opened

Finding the dried dandelion still tucked behind my ear a week later. Remembering that to bite the stem tastes like poison

unmanned inhuman a nail a head I am but an aerial vehicle packed with ordnance

Which one wears the dick? the husband asks, opening a Bud Light between his forearm and bicep.

We kept our eyes closed when we lathered our cunts with the harsh soap fashioned from human fat.

I fear suffocation and I fear snakes and once, in a movie, I saw a man with a python wrapped around his whole head—he couldn’t even scream.

How hands graze the body [no] Cold immediacy [yes] how fire strikes blooming cheeks [maybe] moths drawn to the flame [yes]

As long as you believe in miracles, you will craft clever little animals out of paper that came from a tree that once touched hands with god

Necessity is a cruel goddess in a crystal laboratory. The bullet compass and sunflower phrenology spring from her mercury mirror.

Labradorite, charmed and braided into a bracelet. The beaded memory of our first kiss, the shame-sting of it, and how quickly we wiped our lips after.

There you are, in the mirror again looking back at me with your shiny twisted flesh.

The moon is my right lung— I see the fullness of its glowglobe, Its soft teeth sunken-in liké an ostrich egg—

Give us the pitchy whine the mind of night that pulls at our nerves like a cat pulling at kitchen blinds gently

Tarot told me to stop splitting my self like a brick against the window. Splintered ask, as I whipped concrete brack into mirror

There is a ghost in my apartment. I don’t mean to suggest that I am haunted in every sense of the word. Only that he is here.

The next time. You see me, I’ll dress in red. Call me Lady Lucifer, the devil’s next lover, collecting a bouquet from her audience

We are running from a beast*, a hound slobbering upon the glass, void of restraint.