POETRY BY SUMIKO SAULSON
Photo by Reese Enghardt
Sumiko Saulson is a two-time Bram Stoker Award® Finalist for poetry for “The Rat King” (2022, Dooky Zines) and “Melancholia” (2024, Bludgeoned Girls Press).
They won the Afrosurrealist Writers Award in 2018, was an Elgin Award Nominee in 2022, and was a Ladies of Horror Readers’ Choice Award winner in 2021.
Their novel Somnalia: The Metamorphoses of Flynn Keahi is available on Mocha Memoirs Press.
GHOST IN MY HEART
I thought grief a thief
That could be locked out
With alarms
But I was wrong...
It can penetrate walls
Seep through defenses
Slip under doors
Like a wisp
Catch me by my ankles
When I’m walking away
Hold me in place
Broken
Contagion of grief
Miasma of sadness
Sticky-fingered ectoplasmic geist
It gets to me
As I run away
Slowing my pace
Inescapable
HEARTBREAKER
My friends grieve again
Why do so many of us die?
This isn’t just personal pain
It’s a cohort experience
And I, more angry than hurt,
Can’t heal the brokenhearted
Deserted grief perverted
A lifeline cleft a clan bereft
I can see the way she looks
At your willowy ghost
You always were a heartbreaker
Sitting in a corner
Late-night berserker
Pouring broken verse
On the back of a bar napkin
Spilling it out onto the edges
You left
Personal narrative
In a PDF file
Now you’re a collection
Of legends, myths and memories
Oral stories passed around
A blazing electronic campfire
A CONSUMPTION OF CANCER
Building blocks, stem cells
Deconstructed DNA
Pulled pork strings of meating
Deadlines, palm-sweat greeting
A half-decade of woes
Decomposed
MONSTROUS
Monstrous came down from on high
And told me not to believe social lies
And even though he told me so
I let him bind me with social ties
Strong arms held me close and tight
A monster slept in my bed at night
My self-esteem did Monstrous shred
And bind it thoroughly to his bed
My love was a tea strong and sweet
I would spill it all and wash his feet
In the morning I’d awaken refreshed
My head nestled against his chest
When Monstrous came
Down from the sky
He told me only mortals die
Bending to my neck
his breath hot, he would say:
“Promise me, accordingly
That alive you will stay…
Breathe in me fluidly
As night gives way to day”