~ le mysterieux carnival: queered halloween ~
Hyacinth Noir’s pre-premier issue celebrating Le Mysterieux Carnival on 6 October 2012, with themes of whimsical and macabre queerness in Halloween
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Lycanthropy, by Zendrix Berndt
His jaw unhinging
Give me the death crack of his spine
Whispering shafts of midnight
Moonlight
Give me the shoots of bamboo tongue
Cross-haired cloudy and toe-curling menace
Malice
Make these ebony walls ooze sweat
Pour sinister swirling silver streaks
Spilling humid hunger for
Touch
As a cathedral shredding the nocturnal shroud clawing
Collapsing
Bodies imploding
Pelvis disjointed and aching with
Nightshade and wolf’s bane
Hemlock and hymnals
Too rich for even the organ to play
Tune too heavy for even the organism to carry
Organ
Heartache
Cardiac arrhythmia
Irregular syncopation
Organic orgasm opens the mouth
The fanged jowls creaking in lacteal howls
Drink him in
There can only be one predator tonight
He an anomaly, a mirage, a shadowed visage veiled in twinkling vespers
Tear the faun flesh into masticated manhood folds
Forgiveness lurks in the twinge
Little Death
He is change, he is no good, he is abomination
Coarse razor talon teeth twist forked fingers
He is wolf, he is man, he is monster
Rip me into the pieces of ecstasy that paint his sky a darker blood moon bloom hue
Becoming the beast beneath the beating
I am changing, I am no good, I am abomination
Soft naked lips locked curling smile smouldering cinnamon
Drink me in
I am wolf, I am man, I am monster
Make me his insides; my own impure and infernal
Fan the flaming legs fan folded fully furnace flaring feeling fleeting forest fire fragrance
Flakes of humanity sink deep into the soiled sheets
Paper
Make me write, this creature
Cultivating, collecting, accumulating, within
Werewolf writing about him breaking
Me
Jaw unhinging
Silhouette against the man-skin drum-moon
(bio. Zendrix Berndt is an emerging multi-racial gay poet. Born and raised in Kansas City, Missouri, he is currently a college student working towards becoming a successful multi-talented artist. He seeks to broaden the world’s understanding of all minority peoples and challenge the minds of today’s youth through the arts)
–
October 22, 2003. 11:55 pm, by Michelle Kopp
Cold coffee poured fresh in the morning
A New Orleans killer targeting women in
virginal white corsets.
They are lying and lead fruitless lives
sleeping with vampires whose seed devours.
She opened her bloody legs to God
A woman sketching naked bodies
across a canvas of blood while
her lover is writing poetry of
death and loss and pain.
Holiday whores swallow seven white seas
Silver dragons encountering elves with
arrows and bows of glistening bone.
The world they are fighting for is
crimson with blood, obsidian with darkness.
Blood pooled at her head, her chest, and again at her stomach
Mortal Gods walking among us
and she will know what it
will feel like to be fucked by them.
Lasting mark — a bloody palm against white wall, a rotting foetus
Horrific video games she cannot bear playing
Freddy’s claws, Jason’s machete
and an atrocious chainsaw massacre
they are honouring with a movie.
What lives are worth remembering if
mass multimedia corporations aren’t
reaping from the profits of death and blood?
God recreated Adam a wife because Lillith was feministic
And the poet sits while
her lover sketches Inuit clothes
because she enjoyed the carpenter’s tale.
(bio. Michelle Kopp is an overworked graduate student and part-time writer in Saskatchewan, Canada. Her creative non-fiction work has recently appeared in The Diverse Arts Project and Up On The Prairies)
–
I have an ember, soft and green,
that lights this windblown palace.
An urn for stars, a cup
to share your mouth, only at my word.
I shall stand and strike the spark.
The flint skips a beat.
The dry leaves crack,
as an unwelcome wind
cools the stone.
In the palm of my hand
its lacklustre eye
steals the shine
of my own.
– Lock the door, I say. Something is amiss.
But it is you by the door,
before I could weave the condition,
the refrain.
– Don’t touch that cup, I say.
You reply with a voice
so weak, so timid,
I need you now.
You say with my voice,
I need you now,
and drink for us.
The flint turns to putty
in my hand.
What magic this love,
as the urn gives birth
to a new constellation
(bio. Richard Ballon has had poetry published in: Social Anarchism, St. Anthony Messenger, Changing Men, Onionhead, Fellowship in Prayer, Fag Rag, Visions International, The Haight Ashbury Review, Poetpourri, Zuzu’s Petals, The Lilliput Review and many other literary journals. He has had monologues published in The Caterpillar Chronicles and The Good Ear Review. The Estrogenius Festival included two of his monologues in their 2008 Collection. Richard’s theatre work in NYC has been at The Estrogenius Festival, Stage Left’s: Women at Work, MamaDrama, and Left Out Festivals, EAT’s One Man Talking, One Woman Standing. Other work at Universal Theatre, Provincetown, Devanaughn Theatre, Boston, Dylan Thomas Festival, Chicago, Walking the Wire Festival, Iowa City, Inspirato Festival, Toronto, Black Box Festival, Honolulu, ArtHotel, Montreal, Asphalt Shorts, Kitchener. He is a member of the Dramatist’s Guild)
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hyacinth noir 