The October Featured Poet is D.J. Tyrer
Please feel free to email D.J. at: atlanteanpublishing@hotmail.com
BURIED BELOW
Descend cellar steps
Realtor had no key for the door
Necessitating a sledgehammer entry
Stepping over splinters on the way
To discover what lies below
Only to discover nothing remarkable
Nothing, not even boxes of junk
Upon muddy earth floor
Anticlimactic
After imagination run wild
With horrors and treasures
Only to notice disturbed soil
Too recent to be right
What is buried below?
Curiosity flows too deep
Run, fetch shovel, start to dig
Dig down deep, pile up soil
Keep digging, curiosity-driven
Shovel strikes wood
Clear soil away from coffin lid
Stand, staring, perplexed
Why bury a body here?
Dare not to lift lid
Yet lid lifts itself
As cellar inhabitant stands, stretches
Pallid corpse flesh, dead eyes
Bares fangs
Prepares to bite, drink
Gorge
Risen from the grave
In its secret cellar home
WET LOCKS
She waits in the pool, dripping
Skin the color of pond scum
Hair like the trailing weed
Lurking below the still waters
A beguiling smile
A beautiful face
She beckons you in on a hot summer’s day
Invites you to swim with her
Grips you, drags you down
Choking, choking, choking
Till the waters still
And you grow still, too.
FRIDAY NIGHT SACRIFICE
Answer the ad
Willing to earn some money
Babysitting is a simple job
A little embarrassed
As the Mom probes
Confirms she has no boyfriend
Is innocent in such things
Obviously want no hanky-panky
With the kid asleep upstairs
Okay, all’s good
Leave a list of contact numbers
Ask her to go up and check
When the clock strikes nine
Dutifully waits
Let’s the child sleep
Then at the chime
Heads upstairs
The light-switch flicks uselessly
Bulb must’ve blown
Can barely see in light from hall
Approaches the crib
Looks down
Child looks up
Takes a moment in the darkness
To realize what’s wrong
The shape
The shape!
Not a baby
Not a human one
Alien
Strange
It leaps up
Barely a chance to scream
Silence
Except for the sound
Of feeding upon flesh
That demon child receiving
Its weekly
Friday-night sacrifice
D.J. Tyrer is the person behind Atlantean Publishing, was placed second in the 2015 Data Dump Award for Genre Poetry, and has been published in The Rhysling Anthology 2016, issues of Cyaegha, Carillon, Frostfire Worlds, Illumen, The Pen, Scifaikuest, Sirens Call, Tigershark and California Quarterly, and online at Makata, Three Drops from a Cauldron, Bindweed, Poetry Pacific, Scarlet Leaf Review and The Muse, as well as releasing several chapbooks, including the critically acclaimed Our Story.