13 O’Clock

by Anthony Servante 

 

There is a point

where the top

touches the bottom

where the sides

meet the middle

when the past

becomes the future

and everything

in that instant

starts and ends

anachronistically

like the day

and the night

at twilight

equal neither

themselves

nor one another

but something more

which owes

nothing

to history

space or motion

life or death

because

it pauses

for eternity

in its own moment

and place

for us

to whom time

holds no debt

save for 13 o’clock.

  

From Urban Graves: 13 Poems from the Machine

by Anthony Servante

Copyright 2014

Available on Amazon for Kindle

 

Endless Nameless
by Glen Krisch

Reviewed 

by Anthony Servante

BUY HERE

Glen Krisch Amazon Page.

Glen Krisch in his new poetry book, “Endless Nameless”, explores language and its fragile interpretation of emotion. With a series of poems that rely on comma manipulation and mimetic representations, that is, art imitating life, Krisch searches within his own purview to exemplify this mimesis.

Wow, you must be thinking: What did you smoke, Anthony Servante?

Allow me to defend these highfalutin words. When Glen Krisch sent me a reader’s copy of the book, he said, “I've attached a pdf of Endless, Nameless. It's pretty atypical [my italics] from what I normally write, and it's quite personal.” Therefore, I will not concentrate on the personal subject matter of the poems but rather the objective structure of the poetry that exemplifies the importance of his subjects.  

As I’ve read Krisch’s horror stories, I ventured into his poetry with the word “atypical” in mind. The first thing I noticed was his use of commas to infer double meanings. For example, in “Closeness”, the opening poem:  

“Until it was gone, expired,

a time come to pass, imperfect  

a connection needing to breathe

today and every day, gone” (pg. 11).

The word “expired” is offset by commas, isolating the term to not only include time gone by but a time lost. Then “imperfect… everyday” is also isolated by commas, expanding of the nature of the time lost, a moment that needed to breathe but was in a sense suffocated. The final word, “gone”, separated from this lost time with a comma serves to echo the initial use of the word, accenting the first meaning of time passed. Thus we have the framing device: Time gone, time lost, time lost, time gone, two views strung together by the center line, “a connection needing to breathe”. Notice the absence of the narrator, the “I” who relates the moment. “You” appears in the opening stanza and closing stanza, framing the two views of time. This ambivalent framework allows the reader to see the narrator without seeing him. He is lost to time.

 

But, Anthony, isn’t this the poetic way of writing poetry, to put the words above the narrator. No, because in the next poem, “Waiting”, Krisch opens with the “I” narrator in his description of a forest. The exclusion of the narrator is necessary in the first poem and necessarily included in the second. In "Closeness", the subject matter requires language that leads us there. In "Waiting", the narrator escorts us through the subject matter, that is, the forest. 

 In “Quarantined”, Krisch again effectively uses the absent narrator and comma separation.

“It travelled upon the air, tonight,

last week, the month before,

unknown, unseen, insinuating” (pg. 21).

We immediately note the separation of words and phrases with six commas. Note also that this is only one sentence. Each term is accented with this comma usage. The virus, never mentioned, is referred to as “It”, and then articulated in a staccato fashion, pausing the reader to take in each term individually. By this means, we can understand the absent narrator’s frustration with being isolated over a long period of time. Thus absent, the reader must take his place to fully appreciate the poem. We experience the two narrators, Krisch and us, the readers.  

We see this playful use of language and grammar over and over throughout the poems. This is a poet who knows what he’s doing and knows how to reach his reader without bashing us over the head with heavy emotions. We get the double meanings without his having to spell it out for us.

 

 

Funereal Plots

Horror Cinema reviews

Matthew M. Bartlett

Late Night With the Devil

Writers/Directors – Colin and Cameron Cairnes

Like Antrum, another recent found footage gem, Late Night With the Devil opens with a documentary-style prologue that effectively sets the stage—the turbulent 1970’s as documented on television—and sets up the concept: Late Night up-and-comer Jack Delroy (David Dastmalchian, exquisitely essaying ingratiating and needy), the host of a show entitled Night Owls, is a member of a mysterious men’s only group for the powerful and the ambitious. His beloved wife, a nonsmoker, dies of lung cancer, and his show struggles for viewers. In a bid for ratings, trying to save the show, he plans an occult-themed Halloween special, its centerpiece a purportedly possessed young women. The plan is that he will attempt to interview the demon who’s possessed her.

Most of the remainder of the movie consists of the talk show itself, along with backstage footage. We meet Delroy’s affable sidekick (Rhys Auteri, wonderfully watchable) and sit through a mercifully brief monologue. Then Delroy brings on his first guest – Christou (Fayssal Bazzi), a medium who claims he can summon the spirits of the dead, which he attempts, working the crowd with intriguing results. The next guest, Carmichael Haig (Ian Bliss, intense and amusing) is a former magician and professional skeptic, who arrogantly attempts to debunk Christou’s performance and receives for his trouble a fusillade of black ichorous vomit from the latter, who’s been stricken by a vengeful spirit whose provenance is as yet unknown.

The movie kicks into high gear as Delory introduces a film clip that provides key details about the possessed girl—found alive after the mass-suicide of a cult that’s sort of like devil-worshiping Branch Davidians, led by an Anton LaVey-esque figure with the pitch-perfect moniker Szandor D’Abo. Then we are introduced to Lilly and the author of the book about her (Ingrid Torelli and Laura Gordon, respectively). Torelli plays Lilly to the hilt, staring oddly at the camera and slyly taunting Delory, all while maintaining a faux-innocent charm—it’s a balancing act that pays off perfectly. A bravura performance.

To say too much more would be to head into spoiler territory. Suffice it to say that the movie escalates like a jetliner taking off, culminating in not one but two jaw-dropping, explosive set pieces, and an eerie denouement that ties everything together even as it gloriously and brazenly abandons the movie’s found-footage premise.

Late Night with the Devil does struggle a little with pacing as the show opens, and the backstage footage strains the suspension of disbelief, but these are minor quibbles. Altogether the movie has a lot of fun with its premise—a refreshing respite from the string of dour, plodding horror flicks that seem all too prevalent these days. The men’s group footage, with its eerie costumery and strange rituals, scratches the folk-horror itch, and the devil-cult footage is fantastically lurid. Strange, costumed figures peppered throughout the audience, and brief, sly glimpses of a creepy glowing figure keep you searching the screen for clues. Nods to The Exorcist, Sybil, Rosemary’s Baby, and even Halloween 3 enliven the proceedings. The sets, costume, and hair are immaculately ‘70s, unlike a lot of period pieces that miss the mark by going too over-the-top or anachronistic. You’ll nod with grateful recognition at the house band’s familiar ‘70s musical cues.

I strongly recommend Late Night with the Devil. Minor issues with pacing and verisimilitude aside, it’s a tremendously satisfying, over the top horror confection with a fine sense of humor. It’s a blast to watch, rewarding repeated viewings, and it sticks the landing. You can’t ask for much more.

 

Funereal Plots

Horror Cinema reviews

Matthew M. Bartlett

Lord of Misrule

Director – William Brent Bell

Screenplay Tom De Ville

Rebecca Holland (Tuppence Middleton) is the new vicar in a small, quaint English hamlet, where she lives with her husband Henry (Matt Stokoe, underutilized) and their 10-year-old daughter, Grace. Grace has been selected by the village to be the Harvest Angel at the Harvest Festival, which, if you know anything about folk horror, means she’ll disappear. Thankfully, this obviously inevitable plot point is dispensed with almost immediately. At the festival, Jocelyn Abney (The Witch’s Ralph Ineson, who elevates any piece in which he appears), costumed as the titular Lord, and played with suitable menace by, grapples with a man in the costume of a spirit named Gallowgog. The latter represents a threat to the harvest—the threat of blight—who must be appeased with…gifts.

You see where this is going.

This movie grabs the viewer by the lapels and screams I AM FOLK HORROR—woodcuts, odd drawings, eerie puppets, handmade masks, and blood-tainted eggs fill the screen. Villagers (typically charming, odd, doting, folksy) try to soothe the terrified mother, yet at the same time it’s evident that the whole town is in on the daughter’s disappearance, and that their feelings toward Gallowgog are perhaps less hostile than it seems at the outset.

Through the first half of the movie, the by-the-numbers folk horror accoutrements and plot, combined with an underwritten lead character, are less than promising, and not at all compelling. Sometimes it’s just baffling. Characters burst into laughter for no apparent reason. Much seems to be made of a child’s sneeze, which turns out to be meaningless, just a mechanism for a scene change. And here and there the camera, accompanied by a musical sting, swings meaningfully to an open door or a corner of a chicken coop—but we can’t tell what we’re supposed to be looking at, as it’s far away or swathed in shadows, and the scene ends.

But something happens as the plot progresses, as the atmosphere thickens, as we see a little more of Joceyln Abney’s backstory, as a classmate of Grace’s reveals a room hidden under the floor of the school—we begin to find ourselves invested, to see what exactly has become of Grace, to determine the exact relationship of the villagers to Gallowgog, and to the Abrahamic God that Vicar Rebecca Holland worships there in vain.

The resolution, alas, proves somewhat disappointing, a little dubious; it will likely send the viewer—as it did me—to one of those Reddit threads where someone asks “can someone please explain the ending to me?”

Also lacking are the creature effects when the “real” Gallowgog is revealed. Frankly, the costume from the Harvest Festival was more frightening.

Altogether, Lord of Misrule is worth watching, especially for the folk horror aficionado seeking creepy visuals and atmosphere, but doesn’t require too much in the way of plot or intrigue. It’s a notch or two better than the recently released misfire Unwelcome, despite its not being able to reach the heights of its forebears, such as (obviously) The Wicker Man (1973) or even more recent gems like Midsommar and Kill List. As a fan, and sometimes a practitioner, of folk horror fiction, I just wanted more.

 

Purchase here.

Bruises On a Butterfly by Chad Lutzke

Reviewed by Anthony Servante

Summary:
A young boy runs away from his abusive home to live in the fort he's built in the middle of a Michigan cornfield. But when a cosmic discovery late one night warps reality into a mutating nightmare, it's up to loyal friends to fix what they can… and bury what they can't.

A dark coming-of-age tale that melds Colour Out of Space with Stand By Me.

Review:

In this seemingly predictable coming-of-age tale, the narrative takes a sudden turn into science fiction that leads into some wicked body horror while staying true to the drama of the plot. There is so much to like about this story, it's hard for me to pinpoint that one element that makes it work. It's a conglomeration of horror and family conflicts, mystery and fantasy. I can understand how multiple readings may help to uncover multiple meanings. Emotional at its core, but thought-provoking in its design. Awesome, in the true sense of the word, is a description that can only scratch the surface of this novella. One can only recommend that readers dive into this story without reading reviews and embrace the experience in a one-sitting read. When you strip away the horror from this book, you're left with a good drama, and that's what good horror does, even as it scares the crap out of you. Chad Lutzke has added a new page to the book of Horror. I look forward to reading more from him. 

 

More Gothic Poems

Rhys Hughes

I am progressing in my endeavour to write 77 Gothic poems and I must confess to feeling pleased with what I have produced so far. The imagery is mostly dark, of course, but there is mystery as well as horror: unresolved enigmas. Not every poem is a story. Some might be impressions, muddled or precise, or may offer a hint or selection of hints, rather than describe a situation. Having said that, there will be narrative poems aplenty in the completed set of poems. Here are another five examples of the work in progress….

******

The Flower

The flower is dead

and you resemble that bloom

shut up in you room

where the sun never shines:

collapsing, wilting,

turning black in the thin cracks

that crawl over your skin.

Your malnourished body

is like a stem: I can encircle

your waist with one hand,

but the waste in your face

deters me from embracing you

in the enclosed space,

your shuttered, dreadful place.

The gardener is coming

to remove the flower forever,

each blade of his shears

is the crescent of an old scythe:

yet the expression you wear

persuades me again that

the reaper will leave you alive.

The Pendulum

The hanged man

swings slowly through the night

and we who sleep

below the gallows

are gently lulled by the creak of

the rope that itself

in bonus mockery

was braided from dead men’s hair.

The time that tells itself

never dares be

inaccurate: in hell the flames climb

and lick the feet

of the pendulum, the flesh

and bones beneath,

and still we sleep: the travellers on

this timeless road.

The Bandit Cave

They are festive in the firelight

and gambol through the smoke

of damp sticks,

the spluttering, crackling blaze

guarding the mouth of the cave.

Wet boughs cut from sick trees

with scimitars

like the legs sliced at the knees

of unfortunate

travellers: the robbers celebrate.

At the back of their hiding place

can be found the ill-gotten gains

gathered over

many years: flamboyantly sordid

and rotten, all glistening like tears.

The bandits dance away the hours

after midnight

until those things outside the cave

become milder

in the sacred rash of a fresh dawn.

The things that are half unformed,

that dreadfully twist as they move,

cutting grooves

in blood-soaked soil with mutated

feet that resemble ghastly hooves.

The creatures with fewer features

on tortured faces

than any goblins, ghouls or ghosts

can possess that

their unsettled dreams might evoke.

The entities that need no shelter,

the creatures that once were men,

vengeful victims

of the villains: who still are said

to yearn to settle burning hatreds.

So the bandits dance: what else?

Drunk, oblivious,

knowing that one night the game

of knife and gun

shall be considered over for them.

Iceman

In the depths of a glacier

I see a man

and he can see me

and while he gapes wordlessly

I consider my position.

He has been frozen there

ten centuries

or more: civilisation

and its wars have passed him by.

So what is my mission?

To free him with a hatchet

blow by blow,

thaw him with a fire,

and hurl him back into the world,

the wolves of his desire?

No, I cannot do this task,

no matter how

loudly he wordlessly

asks: a path was chosen long ago

for him: I must turn to go.

Frozen forever, his destiny,

hateful his eyes,

but are we not unwise

to believe we are freer than he is?

We are glaciated by fate.

The Cupboard

The cupboard was locked.

It had been there in a corner of the attic

for as long as I could recall.

I had often wondered

what it contained: the key was missing,

a mystery sufficient

to trouble hairs on the nape of my neck.

The next step was to force

the lock: to wreck the painstaking work

of some ancient craftsman.

I used an iron crowbar

to splinter wood: the feeling was good,

until I peered within,

and then I grimaced, hideously grinned.

Inside

was nothing but the key,

the key to the very lock,

a key unlike any I had seen before

and it had

the shape of me.

 

The Brown    
    Eyed Son

by Ossie Mancias

I am the brown-eyed son

I was born in Maravilla

in the government housing projects

where the game goes on;

I sit outside my window and watch the players,

the bat and ball owners

who hit a home-run

straight through the old man's 

                                window,

the bitter old man

who yells at us kids

from behind the glass,

but who never comes out;

I listen to the panicking players

who scatter with anticipation

of the wrath of the cinto (the belt)

across their backsides;

I see the old man

violently open the door, 

breaking the lock

and bouncing the latch across the 

                                porch;

he steps outside, baseball in hand;

it's a miracle!

he is outdoors,

a first in the neighborhood;

I stand to behold him:

he is godly, like Thor or Pancho

                                Villa;

he spots me

and rushes at me;

I run away,

sensing his anger,

feeling his hand

about to grab my neck;

he wants to kill me,

but I just escape 

into the doorway home;

I slam the door shut,

lock and latch it closed

and wait for him to leave;

waiting and waiting,

years pass,

my hands wrinkle

working the lock and latch

on the door;

I absorb days and nights

in the quiet of home,

often writing poems and stories

about games and shadows in

                                Maravilla;

suddenly, mid sentence,

a baseball breaks through the

                                window

and shatters my thoughts;

angry and bitter

for having my loneliness disturbed,

I leap at the door

and force it open;

the latch snaps off

and bounces across the 

                                porch;

I spot a boy watching me in awe,

like I'm a homerun hitter;

I run at him 

with one fist clenched in accusation,

the other holding the ball;

he runs away

and I give chase;

angrily I almost grab his neck

but restrain my hand

at the fatal moment

as I realize that I am outdoors;

I watch the boy enter his doorway

                                    home;

he slams the door 

and locks and latches it shut;

I aim the baseball at his window

but decide against throwing it,

instead dropping it to my side 

for some other player to find;

for if the window breaks

too soon or too late,

I will never be born:

I am the brown-eyed son.