“Ghosts don’t exist” and she’d
tweak my nose and chuckle and
call me Casper.

(Who is Casper, anyway?)

But now I know parents lie.

I sit in the fearful dark, try to recall
her face; and hush and croon to Johnny.
I say,

“Be still, don’t cry” and call him
baby; even though I’m only ten
and he is eight.

(Monsters are real.)

I’ve seen them storm through churches;
tear babies from their mothers
to snap their fat arms with
red-stained teeth.

How I wish she hadn’t lied, all
those months ago! “Sshhh, Johnny,” I say,
“if they hear you,

they’ll come and eat you.”

—–

Suzanne writes speculative fiction from her little corner of Massachusetts, where she raises two kids, a husband, and two black cats. Her poetry has been published in High Coup Journal, newWitch, Pagan Edge, and Strong Verse. Luna Station Quarterly published her short story, _Essie._ You can find Suzanne lurking on Facebook or at http://suzannereynoldsalpert.blogspot.com/.

We watched them walking,
just outside our garden gate,
past the old Winthrop house,
where Pine and Filbert

intersect. We felt
the crimson tracer tag
our retina’s. Mark
us Barska red for –

Stop, Miss Alba …please…

Miss Alba, at her window
box,her M16 cradled on
her pinched envelope,
candy – button pink shutters,

Miss Alba, please you musn’t…
What about St. Francis?

THUNK
THUNK

took the shots . Elijah
smiled a dark whirlwind smile,
as if he had just realized how
easy it is to slide lips over teeth

and I pulled on my HAZMAT suit,
with its bouncy booties
and oven mits that smelled
of equine and NH3.

Went into the shed,
where Mama used to keep
he garden tools to nurture
plump bulbs in the daybeds.

I buried them up on the Hayden’s Pass
(a hilltop, that over looked their town)
along side the other late infected.
Piled them high with gravestones

to keep them in their place.

I think I knew that one- she used to
sit behind me in Algebra 2…

I told em’ you can’t go walkin’
about in the day. I told em’
they shouldn’t do that in public -
where God en’ everybody could see.

Yes – she lent me a pencil sharpener once-
the size of a silver dollar with a clear domed cap…
I told em’ the mind plays tricks sometimes.
That small towns have long memories-

No – she wasn’t an animal at all.
She would most certainly go to heaven.
I watched her head swell and burn
in a rusty metal can- I told em’ to forget.

things were better, back when we were like siblings,

you, the normal older brother, with a soft spot

for us, your retarded kin. Except even then

you couldn’t hide your distaste for us.

Something about our staggering gait,

our blind stare, our groping outstretched arms

you didn’t like. Maybe our decaying flesh

made your skin crawl, and the thought

of what we do on Saturday nights

was too much for your gentle sensibilities.

Maybe our astounding strength threatened your ego,

or our relentless plodding insulted your sense of purpose.

Mother Theresa among the lepers you were not.

Plus, we got a hankering to eat your brains,

did I mention that?  But what should we eat?

Dogs? Dandelions? What else in this abandoned,

black universe is there for the undead to eat except

the gray, wet joy of your brains? When the unholy sun

climbs into the sky like a boil swelling with puss,

the light scalding us and burning out our eyes,

you are the light, you are the terror we hunger for,

you are the destroyer, the monster, the one

we tell our rotted little children about,

the horror that hides at the heart of all things,

our deepest hunger, the font of light, living

and blooming, outpouring from your brains.

the wind had blown, thawing the top layer

that it might freeze again, a thin crust

like sugar on creme brulee.

She’d never learned to walk, it seemed

and it was too late to master the trick

Her grey fingers, pudgy with dimpled knuckles,

splayed wide upon the ground and she crawled

inching forward, bit by bit.

Behind her, the thing that had been her mother

shambled forward through the snow to her knees

it tripped her, and she tumbled forward

into the drift. Buried, flailing like a swimmer

going down for the third time.

But the infant continued on, little by little.

Her lips curled into a snarl

her stomach screaming with a hunger

no bottle could sate.

I heard you screamin’ in your sleep last night.

‘Round three past thirty after three.

What was it you said in last night’s keep?

“I’m going to the slaughter along with the sheep,

a wolf wrapped in wool has just as much meat.”

and ashes, waxes her board to surf the waves

of undead coming through the gate, their shoulders

bent at just the right angles. Her skin glows sulfur,

a bottle placed high on a blackened shelf, fallen

through the cracks between life and afterlife,

the miracle potion of a quack now dust beneath

the soles of an undead little girl.

held at the mall, the day before
the outbreak Now that music

with no elevator, is drowned out
by the masses, whose feet

drown out the screams. We move
separately together
All looking with no eyes

for the slow
tender
fat man

who smells of summertime
barbecue, and the woman

who is filled with tomato soup
and crackers We feed and drink

as the oblivious children play
in the arcade, with light guns

that will not save them.

scabrous eyelids
the tips of her finger bones
beneath cracked nails

shoulder bitten
the burnt taste
of the rifle barrel