POETRY BY LINDA M. CRATE

Linda M. Crate’s poetry, short stories, articles, and reviews have been published in a myriad of magazines both online and in print. She has ten published chapbooks: A Mermaid Crashing Into Dawn (Fowlpox Press), Less Than A Man (The Camel Saloon), If Tomorrow Never Comes (Scars Publications), My Wings Were Made to Fly (Flutter Press),  Splintered With Terror (Scars Publications), More Than Bone Music (Clare Songbirds Publishing House), The Samurai (Yellow Arrowing Publishing), Follow the Black Raven (Alien Buddha Publishing), Unleashing the Archers (Guerilla Genesis Press), and Hecate’s Child (Alien Buddha Publishing). She is also the author of the novel Phoenix Tears (Czykmate Books).

A MONSTER WAS A MONSTER, AFTER ALL
 
she felt him
before she could see
him,
and she tried to tell herself that
it was just nerves;

but it wasn’t—

he waited for her in the darkness,
waiting until his moment to strike;

as the twigs snapped beneath her feet,
eyes swollen with paranoia and the moon
at her back he decided it would be now—

before she understood the gravity of the situation,
she was in his undead arms;

“Good evening, my dear.”
“For whom?”

a wicked laugh escaped his lips,
perhaps she had a point;
but it was not enough to save her from
his thirst or his fangs: a monster was a monster
after all.

BEAUTIFUL MONSTERS

he didn’t see the danger
until it struck him,
the woods had always
brought him solace
until it brought him a
monster instead;
regret struck him when he
was eye to eye with
a red-eyed creature he thought
only existed in fairy tales or mythology—

he didn’t know until it was too late:
vampires were real,

and this one was so beautiful
he couldn’t help but look at the face
as if the devil had been crafted
by angels;

perhaps many eons ago he had known
humanity—

“Never,” the vampire reassured him,
before taking what was left of his life;
so his blue eyes would look at both the
moon and the sun in terror of beautiful monsters.

DECAY

she felt empty
as the house left in decay,

they were connected
only by a thread;
the whisper of a name
of someone she had once loved—

standing in the abandoned home,
covered in ivy and mold and moss
she felt as if she were where she
belonged;

even if she knew that would make
anyone else believe she was
unhinged—

she placed her hands on the floorboards,
and laid on the ground just to feel him
on her skin again;
laying there until her body became
one with the house and she could be reunited with him.