Aphelion Issue 293, Volume 28
September 2023
 
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Fugue of Death

by Alexis Child


I am open to every agony
Flowing in prayer
Preserved in fire
Faced with the wrath of time
The hammer breaks the world
In pieces
Thoughts nailed firmly to the cross
Where nightfall is long

I die in the light
A Saint's mouth like blood
Dust-coated wings affect
My racing heart
In this mirror is Sunday
A time that it were time
The old year has gone to sleep
Creeping joyless hours
Pain speaks: perish!
Silence. Night. To prayer.
Something must happen.
Hissing. Wailing.
Here faces strange as animals

Maybe a black-haired poet going mad
As though it had run out of make-up
Your fallen world built on secrets
Dragged into the sunlight like vampires
I am bewildered
I claw at your hair, drink in your mouth
The reflection remains
The evil times from which my lips
Were made

'Of what do you speak?' dearest saviours
The evening hurls fiery embers from
Cold heavens
The earth is as bloody and bare as the
Body of our Lord
Groaning into extinction


© 2018 Alexis Child. All rites reserved until the worms crawl in…

Alexis Child hails from Toronto, where horror in its purest form is a calculated crime against both the aspirations of the soul and affections of the heart. She worked at a Call Crisis Centre, befriending demons of the mind that roam freely amongst her writings, once lived with a Calico-cat child sleuthing all that went bump in the night, and is haunted by the memory of her cat.

Her fiction has been featured in Schlock Magazine, The Official Fields of the Nephilim Site, SinisterCity, and U.K.’s Dark of Night Magazine.

Her poetry has been featured in numerous online and print publications, including Aphelion, Black Petals, Blood Moon Rising Magazine, The Horror Zine and elsewhere. 

Her first collection of poetry, Devil in the Clock, a dark and sinister slice of macabre horror, gothic, surreal & supernatural poetry is now available on Amazon.

Visit her website: http://www.angelfire.com/poetry/alexischild/

Find more by Alexis Child in the Author Index.

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