NVR 1.2 Halloween: Creature Feature

Poems by Jennifer Reeser, Amit Majmudar, Jane Satterfield, D. A. Cooper, George Witte

As Halloween approaches, I suspect you have noticed many a monster lurking in the neighborhood yards. Soon, those monsters will be roving the streets. Hopefully, you can satiate them with a nervously delivered treat.

In the spirit of the season, here’s a sampler of creature poems from NVR 1.2, the Halloween mini-issue. These aren’t the only great creature poems in the issue, so hopefully these will lure you into the dark depths of the full issue.

(Warning—if you don’t like scary, I wouldn’t read the rest of this post.)

“Nursery Rhyme for Lazy Children” by Jennifer Reeser

They live at bottom of the deep
In ocean waters or in fresh.
They feed with greed on human flesh.
They kill the ones who oversleep.

You never will be fully grown.
They shoot with arrows while you dream, 
Then drag you down like cod or bream,
But first replace you with a clone.

They leave it sleeping in your tent.
It has your eyes. It has your cheeks.
It wakes up early and it speaks.
The tribe won’t wonder where you went.

It does your chores and may amaze.
Like you, it plays and even thinks
But very soon, your double shrinks
And it will die in seven days.
 
Your people will not ever know.
You’ll never love. You’ll never marry.
Your twin’s the one that they will bury
For you’ve gone where the fish bones go.

But if you listen you will thrive:
Get out of bed and brush your hair.
The hunter’s coming. Be aware
Lest you be swallowed up, alive.

Jennifer Reeser is the author of seven books of poetry. She is an author with Penguin Random House, London’s “Everyman’s Library” series, and Able Muse. Her poems, translations, essays and critical reviews have appeared internationally in POETRY, The Hudson Review, RATTLE, and elsewhere, with new work forthcoming in Nimrod from the University of Tulsa. She divides her time between her Gulf Coast estate and home on the Cherokee reservation in Indian Country, Oklahoma.

“Sluagh” by Amit Majmudar

Shut the west-facing windows.
Bolt the door with a wormwood sprig.
Those aren’t bats. Those aren’t starlings
Skittering up the sky tonight.

Snuffed-wick lashes fringe
Lunar sea eye sockets.
Their nostrils dangle maggots
Plump with cerebrospinal brine.

Not all the dead are well-wishers
Loving us like distant grandkids.
Wronged, unavenged, they stalk the young,
Weasel-eager for wren eggs.

They will kiss you with leech mouths
And suck your skin of sunlight,
Brown skin turned to white slough,
Scrap paper scrawled with slogans.

They want you to fight their lost cause,
Brain infected, neck sprouting
The flagpole of a fungal stalk,
War cry born in a burial mound.
 
Beware the army of the dead
Desperate to recruit the living.
They cannot rest in coffins full
Of bedbugs and barbed wire.

Samhain moonrise their reveille,
Their nails scratch at corneal glass.
Harvest your books and holy basil.
Crack the chalk and draw a circle. 

Amit Majmudar’s forthcoming book is The Great Game: Essays on Poetics (Acre Books, November 2024). More information about his novels and poetry collections can be found at www.amitmajmudar.com. 

“Wulver” by Jane Satterfield

               The good werewolf

Out here, the moon’s
a lantern, beloved guide 
for navigating rock pools
scrubbed by salty waves.
Home’s a kind of island cave
& yes, it’s true, I live unchained,
free to wander out to where
the story drops a thread.
Once we were a wulver clan 
who walked the line between 
man & beast, fur-sleek
fishers sporting tartan
under moody Shetland 
skies, our wolf-heads fogged
with otherworldly wisdom,
eyes reflective, gold or silver-blue,
scanning the hills in low light
straight through shining shades
of grey. Exiled from the forest, 
we learned to trust the tide, earned
our reputation on good deeds. 
Those waylaid on upland wilds
we met as brethren, protectors
who ensured safe passage along
perilous routes that led toward
smoggy towns. It was a point
of honor to share out portions
of the herring haul with hungry
widows, leaving fresh catch
fanned across their windowsills.
In a realm where war follows
war, some customs are bound
to fall from fashion. History’s
annals favor the flaming beasts
inked out on sheepskin vellum
by sacred scribes, who, hunkered
in seclusion, mused on sword play
& battle lust. But we who aren’t
monsters dispense kindness
like sugared tea. Is it any wonder
there is no real trace of our lives
in the lore of vanished things?

Jane Satterfield has published five poetry books, including The Badass Brontës, a winner of the Diode Editions Poetry Prize, Apocalypse Mix (Autumn House Poetry Prize), Her Familiars, and Assignation at Vanishing Point (Elixir Press Poetry Award). She is the recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts poetry fellowship, the 49th Parallel Award for Poetry from Bellingham Review, the Ledbury Poetry Festival Prize, and more. Recent poetry and essays appear in The Common, DIAGRAM, Ecotone, Interim, Literary Matters, The Missouri Review, Orion, Shenandoah, Tupelo Quarterly, and elsewhere. Satterfield has served on the faculty of the Frost Farm and West Chester Poetry Conferences. She is married to poet Ned Balbo and lives in Baltimore, where she is a professor of writing at Loyola University Maryland.

“Granny Nyx Sews Before the Rising Light” by D. A. Cooper

She sits, with spool and thread, at her old treadle,
feeding black fiber through its gleaming teeth.
Her feeble foot moves quickly on the peddle;
the cloth she sews meanders underneath
the table like a snake. Drab fabric fills
the empty space, gives substance to the void,
moves matter through the nothingness. Small hills
of shadow dart like rats, quick to avoid
the glow that sneaks in through the window shutters
each time the wind blows them ajar. Some say
in the beginning all was dark. She utters
her little spells to keep the light at bay,
to stop usurping heavens from bewitching,
undoing the snug darkness of her stitching.

D. A. Cooper is a poet and writer from Houston, TX. He recently completed his MFA in poetry at the University of St. Thomas, Houston. His work has also appeared in Ad Fontes, Autumn Sky Poetry Daily, Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought, Light, Lighten Up Online, The Society for Classical Poets, and Witcraft, among others. He enjoys translating dialect poetry from Italy, watching The Office, and looking at trees.

“Nyx” by George Witte

You come unbidden,
slick, malign, 

wings furled to ease
descent through centuries.
 
Skin plump, renewed
with lesser blood,

talons keen, 
incarnadined,

from caul or carapace
made whole, face

desiccated, grey,
baleful in decay.

Form sifting through
transitions, blue

smoke, then soil,
filthy veil

I lift, emboldened
but appalled when,

nocturnal bride
by smile belied,

you acquiesce, 
surrender, kiss.

Dark, delicious, 
your ashes clot my lips.  

George Witte's four collections are An Abundance of Caution (Unbound Edition Press, 2023), Does She Have a Name?, Deniability, and The Apparitioners. New poems are published or forthcoming in Consequence, Five Points, Revel, and Think.