POETRY BY KYLE HEMMINGS

The Three of Us Cannot Go On

The first will always get jealous.

Ears sucking in the sounds of sex

behind closed doors.

Then, delusions will set in.

The sound of a honey jar

shattering through a dream.

The second one might try to skate

on thin ice, just to drown ungracefully.

Or will die from swallowing

bits of glass, broken in a jealous fit.

The third will walk away

as if nothing ever happened.

Father's Forgetful Mistress

She claimed that she was always followed

by pickpockets. That's why, she said,

she was always so empty.

She loved standing at the edge of Briar's Cliff,

dropping bobbins into the sea.

Father kept yelling at her not to stand

so close to the edge. She turned, wavered,

and smiled.

She woke up from dreams claiming

that she had re-stitched the broken blue

of the jagged sea. Her speech was slurred.

Her eyes were glazed. And she wore

that same smile when at the cliff’s edge.

One night, she never awoke.

We surmised that she had fallen,

fallen endlessly,

into the dark rich space

behind her blue-green eyes

now stitched shut.

Kyle Hemmings has been published in The Horror Zine, Danse Macabre, Bewildering Stories, and elsewhere. He loves horror television of the 60's such as The Outer Limits and Twilight Zone. He also loves 60's garage bands.