horror
HOME  ABOUT  FICTION  POETRY  ART  SUBMIT  NEWS  MORBID  ZINES  ODDITIES  BEWARE  CONTACT  BEST  GHOSTS  JOSH.MALERMAN  BOOKS  FILMS   STAFF

POETRY BY DAVID M. HOENIG

DAVID

David M. Hoenig is a multiclass surgeon/writer with the "time management" feat. He’s had stories published with GrimDark Magazine, Flame Tree Publishing, Cast of Wonders, and others. He has published a novel-told-through-surreal-verse-and-art with Oscillate Wildly Press, called Queen to His King. He is editing his first novel (sci fi), at somewhat slower than the speed of light. He’s also a soul-gem carrying member of the HWA.

His website: https://davidmhoenig.wordpress.com/about/

GRAVEYARD

In still, morbid corners,
cobweb memories cluster thicker than pain;
fragments of yesterday molder,
neglected.

Amidst the clutter,
half-formed, half-mad ideas lie decomposing,
no fit foundation for the morrow.

These are my unshriven dead,
which haunt of a night,
of a day,
never content to rest
in pieces.

REVELATIONS

Lights are kept bright in the house
where that which would kill you is excised,
cauterized,
exorcised.

Horologists cry the hours of lives
down painted halls,
stalking painted walls,
exquisite calculations totaling exactly
the sum of one’s scars.

Supplicants come to the house
shrouded in mysteries of esoteric arithmetic,
dreading the moment
when the tallies do, finally, add together,
in case the balance is wanting.

BECAUSE YOUR KISS/HEALS BREAKS

You almost make me want to rethink flaws
because
you glued back the broken pieces for
your
fractured self with gold, as though the remiss
kiss
of self-pitying bristles somehow made precious the fixes.
Is
that your pithy little secret?  Conclusion forgone
on
some regrets checklist? The kind of huge lie
my
anxiety would anxiously tell, yet my self-worth resist?
List
for me where you got the metal, the brush, the prophetic vision from above
of
how pleasing the final form would look, and ensue my own ta-da!
The
conceit has its appeal.  Surely I, too, would be blessed
best
seeing scars of my flaws transformed to art, and thus lessen the stings
things
I wish I’d handled better might leave etched on too-thin skin.
In
sadness, I think I’ll not make so pretty a repair as you, of my paring knife
life.