The March-April Editor's Pick Poet is Linda M. Crate

Please feel free to email Linda at: veritaserumvial@hotmail.com

NAMELESS MEMORIES

The pale memories dance
their surrender
in silver breaths measured only
by the minute movements
of the fluttering curtains
I feel the ghosts before I see them
they are cold and lonely
depressed as I am;

the sun doesn’t diffuse their presence
it only scatters them
they prefer the night when the
darkness pours in,
guarding me as I sleep—
I haven’t quite figured it out,
but they like me
for reasons I cannot ever know;

once there was a poltergeist,
he liked to provoke me
in my teenage years
lit up my rage like a roman candle;
but they drove him away,
and like a cancer undone his cackles
of madness never bothered me again—

the limbs of the weeping willow
danced in a tree full of crab apples
they fell a sweetness to the ground
like the memories the ghosts left
before they decided to glide away in
the lake to protect another leaving
me with nameless memories I could
never fully know.

FREE ME OF THE DAY

Blood red moon
tell me of your victims
spill your secrets
upon the silver dew
speak me riddles
only vampyres can understand
delicious memories
to stain the earth with their
crimson longing;
gaze at me sweet melody
of haunting,
take away the wretched stain of
day and brush me with a
paintbrush of crimson
wrath—
teach me the secret of your fangs
so every pure white dove
tearing into the sinew
of my ego
can be reduced to a stain
in the mouth of your
bodice,
a memory even the stars won’t etch
into their tapestry.

EMOTIONLESS

Bleed me some emotion,
you soulless fiend,
show me something other
than apathy;
for too long you’ve taken
pleasure in the devouring
of virgin’s hearts,
but I’m stronger now than I was
then—
capable of breaking every
fissure of your silver soul into
oblivion
so kiss me with desire
or break me with your
distance, it doesn’t really matter;
because eventually
my fangs will be the death of you
I will thrust my talons into your back
drag you from the dust from
whence you were born
steal my heart back
drink the life from your veins
until remains but a dead body but you’ve
already died
it won’t make much of a difference.

Linda M. Crate is a Pennsylvanian native born in Pittsburgh, but she was raised in the rural town of Conneautville. She attended and graduated from Edinboro University of Pennsylvania with a degree in English-Literature in 2009. Her poetry, articles, reviews, and short stories have appeared in several journals online and in print. Her chapbook A Mermaid Crashing into Dawn was recently published. Her novel Amethyst Epiphany is forthcoming from Assent Publishing under their imprint Phantasm Books.