Image of a family at Thanksgiving dinner—
Rotting corpses alive with fleas and pallid larvae, squirming and jumping,
Wordlessly playing poker at an ebony table in a squalid, cobwebby room at night
Under too-bright fluorescent lights that flicker and buzz like angry bumblebees.
Black and red candles burning to the Scarlet Lady on an altar—
Incense filling the air with a cloying reek of jasmine—
Black widow spiders skittering across the table—
Roses tumbling endlessly from midair, from nothingness, onto the wood and bouncing to the floor—
And a mute figure in a black robe and cowl with a dark void for a face and skeleton hands—
Dealing yet again.
© 2007 by Mark Andrew Holmes.