POETRY BY PIXIE BRUNER

Pixie Bruner is a writer, editor, and cancer survivor. She lives in Atlanta, Georgia, with her doppelgänger and alien cats.

Her collection The Body as Haunted (Authortunities Press) was published 2024. Her words are published/forthcoming in Space & Time Magazine, Whispers from Beyond (Crystal Lake Publishing), Star*Line, Sirens Call, Dreams & Nightmares, Punk Noir, and more. She wrote for White Wolf Gaming Studio.

She is an SFPA and HWA Member.

DANSE MACABRE

Death, slow your roll,
like a steamroller over my generation—
X—not the rebranding of Twitterati,
but a new lost generation: 1968-78.
Unknown graves marked XXX once,
poison, pirates, voodoo, pornography.

Death, you black wing,
my long sought lover,
my ultimate betrayer,
how dare you take them all first?

Swooping down, you ravenous raptor
clutching at ex-lovers, friends, acquaintances.
When do you stop, hungry hyena?
Picking on our growing corpulent flesh
and marrow thin/rich sweet brittling bones
leftover barely past-Spring rotisserie chickens,
when none of us are left standing
above the ground, all of us under
pushing up daisies or are the contents
of pottery filled with just neglected ashtrays?

I am left behind,
I know this intimacy,
these empty rooms of funhouse mirrors
and elegant chessboard tiles
where I dance with my growing ghosts.
And finally, for once, my dance card is full!

Death, black wing,
long awaited lover, with black eyes
divorced me in the ultimate betrayal,
you left me still standing in an empty antechamber.
Forsaken again, I’ve forgot the pavane’s steps.

Death, sooty black wing,
my long desired lover,
all your petty betrayals, you sonuvabitch,
beloved hated constant companion,
You took them all!
You took them all before me!

ONCE WE WERE MERMAIDS

We were mermaids once,
floating on turquatic seas,
we looked forever shoreward.
Or rather merfolk,
forgotten naiads,
cast off spawn of Poseidon
who chose to bifurcate
our Selves to walk on land.
Some of us lost our tails,
took on human forms without larynxes,
while others chose to go deeper
burrowed in anemones
and thermal vents on the sea floor,
crushed to microscopic scale
to remain whole,
but a few of us
chose the other option,
now we wash up on the beaches,
muscled legs, genitalia,
with the iridescent
bodies of fish,
our gills sucking at blue skies,
trying to extract the
air that completely surrounds us
and are unspoken of,
shame of land and sea alike,
Neither fish nor fowl,
but foul monsters,
fish out of water,
floundering to exist,
our petrified bodies copper ore veined
semiprecious stones
landlocked over the epochs.

CRASH LANDING ARIA I

Write home with centrifugal force,
to scrawl with gravitas without gravity
Poem as centrifuge to separate
solids
from
plasma.

Flesh
bone
fascia
from
muscle
and
bone.

Find your perfect moment to fall apart.

Sever
into
wings
and thorax,
Find new lifeforms.
Embrace having form.
Isn’t it delicious?

Crash down landers
Graphene insects leave you
shattered like cheval mirrors
freed from ovoid shells
nearly eroded on
shard
blade
shores,
the incisors
of acidic seas.