Edited by / Mohsen Elbelasy
undertaker inside the mind / death is a vocation
Giorgia’s voice:
nightly
the undertaker of the mind
robs me of your body
& buries you in debris
from the in-between
you grab my sleeping hand
to drag your little corpse
over dreaming cobblestones
through sordid sewers
to watch your tormented torso
fall forever into discarded scrap
& in the dead of endless night
when your snuffed-out eyes
glare at me one last time
skyscrapers in my head explode
o dearest
your lifeless body
is disappearing forever
in unreasonably smiling steel
death’s savage mobs
had arrived early in the morning
when illness first banged on my door
moaning rhythmically their cannibalistic call
ever since
now so many years ago
the undertaker of the mind
has been burying me nightly
into your permeable snooze
my decomposing arms
sticking out of your dreams
a sign for you
to drag my enormous corpse
over sleeping cobblestones
a sign for you
to finally throw
my tormented torso
deep into eternal dross
(my name collapses into my name
my body collapses into my body
my mind collapses into my mind)
John’s voice:
Death is a vocation
It has abandoned seminaries in the North
It is to these darkly born ceremonies we still travel
Bent back as St. Sebastian in the queasy light of sin
On bored nights, funeral trains still circle us
The conductors stuff cats in their habits as penance,
and sleep in the the coats of old monk’s.
By their blood Charon is humbled, and stigmata’s
serrated view circles Cocytus with a cherub’s
paean. By this delivery, Lazarus was brought to us
to die finally and struggling, and he gave voice
to the final Word. Death warps eager hands
with reptile skin. It protects its children. Still
as sullied Hosts, its abrupt reeds bend till
The dark is disturbed and moons rise
In the eyes of the weak and willing.
Death is not staid, he’s wild and sudden.
Death’s a ministry, and the prayer books
It distributes are filled with sun braille.
A kind that could cure a blindness,
But can’t be seen for very long.
Giorgia Pavlidou
is a former clinical psychotherapist addicted to reading, writing and painting. She also holds an MA in Urdu Literature, and earned her MFA from the Manchester School of Writing. Her work has recently appeared or is forthcoming in such journals/anthologies as Clockwise Cat, City, From the Ashes Womxn’s Anthology, Revue de la poésie in Toto, Lotus-Eater, New Urge Editions, Witchcraft Mag, Puerto del Sol and Entropy.
John Thomas Allen
is from New York. He has edited three anthologies of speculative and mainstream poetry. His first book, Nouveau’s Midnight Sun: Transcriptions From Golgonooza and Beyond, was published in 2014. His new book entitled Fake Shemp is due later this year. His poems have appeared in Veil: a Journal of Dark Musings, Arsenic Lobster Magazine, Surreal Poetics, The Cimmaron Review, etc., and he has a story in the recently released anthology titled More Bizarro Than Bizarro.
