Happy Halloween! Popcorn Press‘s annual month-long party ends today within the pages of Cthulhu Haiku and Other Mythos Madness. Here’s one last preview—a masterful poem by Michael Fantina—to provide an idea of what lurks inside, waiting just for you.
Necronomicon
On islands where the sun is masked,
Where only gauzy ghosts are drawn,
In dreams I’m there and somehow tasked
To mark its skies of cinnamon.
Upon its shore strong vines there clasp
An inlaid chest whose oak is wan,
With only one frail rusty hasp,
Shaped like a long-necked crimson swan.
With ease the ancient hasp I break,
To find a tome that sports thereon
A crafty coiling silver snake,
With this word: Necronomicon.
My eyes transfixed I stare and stare
I turn its leaves of thin chiffon,
They’ve weathered well the stagnant air
Coated with basilicon.
Before me now the wyvern’s kiss
Soon coaxed me toward her nameless spawn,
I prayed to leave that black abyss,
To Mithra, Ra, Bellerophon.
My fingers turn, yet hesitate,
These pages printed in Oman,
For I can read the Latinate
That is the Necronomicon!
—Michael Fantina