Fall 2024
De re metallica
by Jennifer Nelson
“This // is what I get for not having a past, / … / Everyone who sees me / wants to know where the humans are // and the answer is I’m a forest / with a few signs of habitation / … // This exorcism fails.” This week, Jennifer Nelson inspires us to properly transcribe the banger lines we’re quoting from their poem “De re metallica.”
Published November 25, 2024
from …While Marie
by Ann Pedone
Speech acts. Cabaret acts. Unpleasant acts. Memory acts. Fungal acts. Child bride acts. Dental acts. Subprime acts. Delusional acts. Calling out in the last working language we share. Today, we feature prose poems from “While Marie,” by Ann Pedone.
Published November 18, 2024
Three Poems
by Steven Karl
Terror in the body, terror in the family, terror on the page, terror in the machine. Today we feature Part II of a series of poems by Steven Karl.
Published November 4, 2024
Three Poems
by Steven Karl
Halloween is every day in our hearts, but this week feels extra hallowed, connecting Samhain with the Day of the Dead. We can think of no better celebration at CDSOB than to present poems from regular contributor Steven Karl. Part I of the set goes up today, and we can all look forward to Part II this coming Monday. Today, 2 elegies and a double feature🎃🔪🖤🔥🍿
Published October 30, 2024
from …AGAIN
by Mark Nowak
You only live once, & yet we expect another turn of the wheel. Mark Nowak presents a litany of x, y, & a bit of z from a series called …AGAIN.
Published October 14, 2024
Two Poems
by Juliet Cook
Rotting bear dolls & chicken brains erase our heads & replace them with images of themselves, & though we might not have a name for this process, Juliet Cook’s poems show us what it feels like to find ourselves somewhere between foreground & background.
Published October 6, 2024
Four Poems
by Jeremy Hoevenaar
We come to “an altar in the sound” “in the flayed yard” “a yolk spitting wet ropes of shadow” “filled with new language” in the light off the axe of Jeremy Hoevenaar’s poems in the moments before the sky goes out.
Published September 30, 2024
Spring 2024
Watch for Deer
by Michael Sikkema
Soon we will all be saying “watch for deer” when we leave the party and go out into that big night. Today, we feature new poems from CDSOB regular Michael Sikkema’s “Watch for Deer” series, in anticipation of his forthcoming CDSOB chapbook of the same name. Watch for deer.
Published July 1, 2024
Four Poems
by Melissa Eleftherion
The horror books we read as kids reveal a darkness we might spend a lifetime working through, along with the very real terrors we encounter. Melissa Eleftherion parses memories of strange companions from formative reading experiences in poems from their “suture” series.
Published June 24, 2024
Dry
by Tim Lynch
What do you see in the face of the monster? Tim Lynch looks the wolf in the eye and sees the man before him, in today’s featured poem.
Published June 10, 2024
Spiral
by C.M. Dreibelbis
What shadows do our daily concerns cast over us, become monsters, and what common things do we fear? C.M. Dreibelbis is not afraid to place this question, in its many ordinary forms, on the table.
Published May 6, 2024
from Dying at the Movies
by Jonathan Hayes
We watch ourselves watching movies as we go about our lives in new poems from Jonathan Hayes’ “Dying at the Movies.”
Published April 22, 2024
Three Poems
by April Ridge
On the day of the solar eclipse in Aries, we offer a plea for “a kinder attitude toward botched necromantic experiments,” as The Bride gets her due in poems by April Ridge.
Published April 8, 2024
Two Poems
by Nate Logan
What runs through our minds as we watch horror movies, or live through them, finds its way into poems by Nate Logan.
Published April 3, 2024
New Mexico at Night
by Steve Roberts
Chainsaws galore! Also tuxedos, checkers, dollars, haircuts & more, all in the backseat of a movie about halloween. Lucky us! Today we present a poem by Steve Roberts.
Published March 27, 2024
Haunt Tectonics
by Chris McCreary
“Language as slab, as slag // & magma bubbling up” as the seance gets cooking & we start to wonder what’s gotten into us while our fingers drift over the tablet, “the better / to encrypt you with” in this poem by Chris McCreary.
Published March 20, 2024
Four Poems
by Juliet Cook
The orbitoclast, a tiny hammerhead shark tap tapping us into place. “I was walking through a parking lot” leads us inevitably, somehow, to “I wasn't sure if I was human anymore.” A standard red horror. In these poems by frequent contributor Juliet Cook, medically-induced terror finds us where we live.
Published March 18, 2024
Three Poems
by Erick Sáenz
A reverse crawl through a screen-print memory of the palindromic repo man in the sky with poems by Erick Sáenz.
Published March 11, 2024
Six Poems
by Matthew Klane
From the cheap seats we watch the man in the wolf costume emerge from the Millenium Falcon. Sure we’re being followed, as we place bets on the exact time of death for print journalism. That’s the signpost up ahead, our next stop: poems by Matthew Klane.
Published March 6, 2024
Two Poems
by Nadia Arioli
A crustacean may take up residence in one’s ear, just as a colony of ants may cart off a monster’s arm. Nadia Arioli’s poems politely, insistently play with species scale and unsettle our presumed place in the scheme of things.
Published March 4, 2024
Fall 2023
ROLEPLAY
by Scout Faller
The feels when it hits the spot: “ROLEPLAY,” by Scout Faller.
Published November 22, 2023
Three Poems
by Nate Logan
The laugh track coming from outside the house makes us lose count of our beers, and that’s when we know somehow this is all Canada’s fault. Heeeeere’s 3 poems (sic) by Nate Logan!
Published November 20, 2023
Two Poems
by Jonathan Hayes
Jonathan Hayes’ pocket-sized poems find us somewhere between the theater (or couch) where we watch the film and our delayed impressions of comfort horrors.
Published November 13, 2023
Three Poems
by Heather Bowlan
How many times have we played out this scene as we haunt the Overlook Hotel & the bodies pile up over the years? Heather Bowlan looks & looks & looks again at the lady in the bathtub.
Published October 8, 2023
Three Poems
by Scott Ferry
Family dinners involve serving ourselves up for mutual devouring as “Birds open their throats and throw their songs into the thick wind.” Scott Ferry’s unsettling “Sentences” and “cremation” show us our banal & bizarre parlor rituals & ask “how much do we eat of others, how much are we eaten?”
Published November 1, 2023
Two Poems
by Juliet Cook
“It’s my fault. I'm going to Hell / even though I don't believe in Hell,” writes Juliet Cook. On the other hand, “My life is not an embryonic petting zoo.” Maniacal show choirs, hissing wine glasses, & tambourine gags ensue in these thorny knockout poems, & we’re here for it all.
Published October 25, 2023
Two Poems
by Ray DeJesús
Tony Todd meets David Cronenberg in the cinema dream of a poet, a double feature by Ray DeJesús.
Published October 16, 2023
Meshes of the Afternoon (and Evening)
by Matthew Schmidt
“some become ourselves / beside ourselves.” When the stairs mess with you like that it’s maybe a sign not to follow the mirror-faced wraith up there. Matthew Schmidt helps us sort the scenery of Maya Deren’s Meshes of the Afternoon.
Published October 9, 2023
Two Poems
by nar juiceharp castle
Here are two earworms to keep you company in this first week of the best month of the year, courtesy of nar juiceharp castle & your fiends at CDSOB.
Published October 4, 2023
Scary Story in 200 Words or Less
by Savannah Cooper-Ramsey
This week, we feature toothsome horror in a small package. Floss those chompers, people.
Published October 2, 2023
Winter/Spring 2023
Four Poems
by Jonathan Minton
Small engine of terror and wonder, the horror film pulls us all the way in. Jonathan Minton’s fright flick poems present bats dangling in the elastic air & have us cowering delightfully before the screen.
Published June 7, 2023
Double Features
by Michael Sikkema
“Fangy mucus mummies just kinda / fuck everything up, mostly at Lou’s Diner.” Sure you’ve seen it before, but have you watched four double features in like 10 minutes? We think not. Poems by Michael Sikkema that make us giddy as Joe Bob Briggs at an all-night drive-in movie marathon.
Published March 29, 2023
Two Poems
by Cate Peebles
“Mother/ didn’t teach me about bleeding/ she pointed to a shelf”🔪🔥Cate Peebles’ poems send us to the closet with Carrie White, and we like it.
Published March 22, 2023
The Tragedy of Macbeth by Joel Coen
by Matthew Klane & James Belflower
A personal essay, cobbled from film reviews into an almost heroic crown of sonnets, illustrated in collaboration with an art-generating program: this Frankenpoem comes courtesy of Matthew Klane & James Belflower.
Published March 20, 2023
Two Poems
by Mark Lamoureux
“Destroy me / like dawn mist, let me lift / into cumulonimbus / a black ghost in the night / season again.”
Published February 15, 2023
Two Poems
by Scott Ferry
”there is no skin that can house you yet you have eyes which can / laser through drywall you have a voice which can sweep up a piano / through a sigh you have tentacles…”
Published February 13, 2023
Two Poems
by Jodi Bosin
”what were we invoking / what are we invoking now / more insidious, elaborate curses…”
Published February 8, 2023
Fall 2022
Two Poems
by Emma Hyche
“The obscene is merely / that which cannot / be unseen. // Steeple pierces / the throat of the sky…”
Published December 21, 2022
Four Poems
by Joseph Goosey
“The holiest terror in toil town / waltzes into the meat den, / observes you tripping the life atrocious, / & decides it’s go time…”
Published December 19, 2022
Death’s Art Dealer
by Scout Faller
“in foreign films the scarecrow / fucks the whole field // red pink lace plaits / crows say what a waste…”
Published December 7, 2022
Two Poems
by Juliet Cook
“Cavernous dread about becoming nothing but teeth / and bones and crawling insects sometimes overtakes / the snow…”
Published December 5, 2022
Three Poems
by Jared Stanley
“The neighbors complain of too much blurring in the windows, normal green, sickening blue. They can’t see us inside us, three X-rays of an iris held up to the sun…”
Published November 30, 2022
Three Poems
by Juliet Cook and j/j hastain
”Our Grandmothers say / we all need more teeth /for our homemade wolves / with/ feathers and wings, / with expanding gills…”
Published November 21, 2022
from I HRT THE CULT YEARS
by Steven Karl
“I see you/ I shall stain you/ I will burn you/ peppermint/rosemary/ mirror glint your face shatters…”
Published November 16, 2022
Five Poems
by Christine Kanownik
”someone explains / the flesh is never allowed / to rest, even when all the / blood is drained out…”
Published November 9, 2022
Two Poems
by Dan Magers
”The clouds are shapes of things we did together / before we slept. In California / the kids reported days would last a week.”
Published November 7, 2022
Two Poems
by Nate Logan
”There’s dark, then there’s pitch and doll eyes. From all trees a choir shuffles…”
Published November 2, 2022
Two Poems
by Ebs Sanders
”Squeezing one eye shut then the other to bring different objects on the floor into focus. Wanting blur, even then…”
Published October 31, 2022
from Spoilers
by Marie Buck & Matthew Walker
“you imagine something is in your head—in this case, built into early life is a sort of creepy lag in understanding how existence works—and actually that gap turns out not to be in the brain, but in the world itself…”
Published October 26, 2022
Two Poems
by Ginna Luck
”We wash out our mouths looking for where the noise comes from, where the swarming resets, where the stuttering resides, where it scales, where it hornets, where it papers a nest...”
Published October 19, 2022
Blood Poem
by Krystal Languell
”Rats run like rabbits through a garden. / The entire house smells like blood…”
Published October 12, 2022
Watch For Deer
by Michael Sikkema
“local despair percolates / in their chests // ticks and big trucks / seize in their telepathy…”
Published October 10, 2022
RIME MAR
by Chris McCreary
”Pull down the coins from the sky & there’ll be no constellations left to guide you.”
Published October 5, 2022
Two Poems
by Warren C. Longmire
“the sharp sweet voice of the golden one violencing my Good, my GAWD…”
Published September 26, 2022
4 Alternate Endings to The Blair Witch
by Laura Henriksen
”Like come on, you saw / how much good the map did you.”
Published September 21, 2022
Four Poems
by Faye Chevalier
"i wakes up & there’s, like, / a whole haptic corpsefrastructure / set to lock & (up)load a wet mass / death upon a city’s collective ass..."
Published September 19, 2022