We've three new poems for you today, from two different writers, covering sci-fi, dark fantasy and mythical creatures.

We start off with After and The Selkie by Beth Cato, who makes a return to Grievous Angel after we first encountered her work in July last year. Beth is the author of The Clockwork Dagger, a steampunk fantasy novel from Harper Voyager. Her website is http://bethcato.com and you can find her on Twitter at @BethCato

Next we have Keys by Edward Palumbo. Edward is a graduate of the University of Rhode Island (1982). His fiction, poems, shorts, and journalism have appeared in numerous periodicals, journals, e-journals and anthologies including Rough Places Plain, Flush Fiction, Tertulia Magazine, Epiphany, The Poet’s Page, Reader’s Digest, Baseball Bard, Dark Matter and poemkingdom.com. Ed’s literary credo is: if you fall off the horse, get right back on the bicycle. We hear you Ed but you haven't seen me on a bicycle!


by Beth Cato


After

radiation's kiss
blisters the lips
that toxic tongue
loosening teeth
still gentler than
his final kiss
a taste of bitter iron,
regrets and salt
his face lost to ashes


The Selkie Visits the Beach
(Six Months After Losing Her Pelt)

water teases with a briny breath
heavy swirl of current
cajoles her to come home, home--

yet sand itches along the tender arches
of her feet
a deep chill pervades her thin skin
so recently tanned

she craves fish for supper
deep fried with chips


Keys
by Edward Palumbo

There are eighty-eight keys to the mansion,
And she waits,
Clad in black, stroking a white cat,
Clad in mystery, pondering a victim,
She appears as a young woman,
No more than twenty - and alluring,
But she is ancient and hungry,
And she has devoured stronger than you,
And she will again,
She seats you and calms you with a glass of red wine,
Hints of chocolate and blackberries haunt your palate,
She will serenade you on the piano,
Until your head becomes light,
And when she has finished,
She will disrobe and offer you her paleness,
Her ancientness,
And you cannot resist,
Your blood is hot in your veins,
But only for the shortest while.

We've two new poems for you today, one with a lunar link and the other distinctly magical. Our poets are Deborah Walker, who says she grew up in "the most English town in the country" (of England that is ..Ed)but she soon high-tailed it down to London, where she now lives with her partner, Chris, and her two young children. Find Deborah in the British Museum trawling the past for future inspiration or on her blog http://deborahwalkersbibliography.blogspot.com/ Her poems have appeared in Dreams & Nightmares, Star*Line and Enchanted Conversation. And Wisconsin-based Alex Plummer, a science fiction and fantasy poet and story writer, whose work has appeared in Fantasy Scroll Magazine, Scifaikuest, Clockwork Kiru and Star*Line magazine among other places. You can find Alex on Twitter @AlphaTheRed


Nanny Nano Moon
by Deborah Walker
 
 
Yardley regolith.
Skin, powdered pale. 
Clinging to craters.   
Blood runs thin through Nanny Nano Moon’s
voided veins.
Cold as a night a fortnight long.
Was hot, so long, these lava tubes when
it was so different in the past.
Tranquil Nanny Nano Moon.
A sea awash with stories
Today escapes.
Helium into vacuum.
But yesterday is close enough to pluck.



Detention at the Mage Academy
by Alex Plummer
 

Tad’s brilliant discovery –
that wind charm + skirts = expensive adolescent thrill –
earned him six hours. Patrick dozes,
arm bound with charred Evocation Club
banner: -rom flame to fame!
Ash on his face – six weeks yet
‘til his nose grows back.
Sasha fumes – literally,
transmutation gone awry –
while Greg and Ariel
in the corner don’t discuss
their transparent skin,
flushing faces visible only
in the cheekbone capillaries.

Lily – only 1 hour, out after
curfew – takes her books and leaves:
brushing the latter out of her hair 
after passing Master Alder at his
desk. Glad – Asten had escaped.

So they could practice
more advanced techniques:
entanglements, fingertip
lightning bolts, and even
stopping time.

She smiled, for she knew
that for the two of them
these needed no magic at all.

Seriously overweight and no social life? What if a visiting alien were to make you an offer you couldn't refuse? In today's story – One Hundred Pounds – Cincinnati-based Mark Mills explores the possibilities, as well as some of the fringe benefits. Mark is an English Instructor at Northern Kentucky University and have been published in Tor.com, Short Story America, Pill Hill Press, RuneWright, Aurora Wolf Press, Bards and Sages Quarterly and other publications. 


One Hundred Pounds
by Mark Mills


Cassius sucked a mouthful of orangish goo off his chip then scooped up another load. He glanced to the list of ingredients on the jar–unadulterated unnatural chemicals of many syllables and no nutritional value. Every night he told himself that tomorrow he’d start to exercise and eat right – he’d gained over a hundred pounds since high school, precious little of it muscle. One day, he swore, he’d lose that weight. But despite his intentions, he went on swallowing loads of amalgamated non-food. His were lips that knew no fruit.

Tonight was no exception, but just as he’d promised to try another diet, the television went dead. Cassius glanced around. It wasn’t the electricity, was it? The lights were flickering but the clocks! The clocks were running backwards. 

“Oh, now I get it,” he said when the alien walked in.

“Cassius Linwood,” said the bug-eyed twerp. “How would you like to make yourself useful and come with me?”

“No chance, Ace! I know what you do once you get humans in space.”

“For crying out loud,” the alien snapped. “That anal probe stuff is completely out of context. It’s virtually always consensual.”

“Well, why me?”

“Look at you – loafing on your bountiful buttocks, gorging on high-calorie snack foods while you’re morbidly overweight. You’re doing something that you know is harmful but do it nonetheless. Unless you get off this planet, you’ll be dead in a matter of months.”

Cassius hung his head and gazed across the gulf of his lap. “I guess you’re right.”

“Hey, don’t sweat it.” The alien patted his shoulder. “Self-destructive behavior is the one sure sign of a sentient race.”

“Really?” Cassius eyed the alien. “So, do you smoke?”

“Oh God no! But my race continues to create industrial waste at such a rate that not even our technology can deal with it. Our very civilization is on the fringe of drowning in our own hideous orange filth.”

“Well that’s bum luck. Anything you can do?”

“Actually there is. We began manipulating your species a few hundred years ago, evolving you to perform valuable services. That’s no time at all if you factor in relativity.”

Cassius looked at the list of ingredients on the cheese dip again. He should have guessed this gunk was alien in origin. “So, how much of the stuff is there?”

“You can have a landfill to yourself with all the chips you desire. And with medical procedures that will keep you alive indefinitely.”

“Uh, what about women?”

“We’ve got incredible simulations, and face it, Stud, that’s better than you’re getting here.”

“Can’t argue with that.” Cassius pulled himself off the couch. “So what’s your planet like?”

“It’s a small yellow world. Only about half the surface gravity of Earth.”

Cassius grinned. Half-gravity. At least one of his promises was coming true.

So how does a nice girl get to be a zombie hunter? Our latest story – by Tom Pawlowski –  is about one young woman’s transformation from a meek writer to a zombie hunter in a post-apocalyptic world. Tom Pawlowski describes himself as "a happily retired engineer pursuing a life-long desire to write creatively".  He has been published at Fiction on the Web and accepted for publication at Voluted Tales.




The Zombie Hunter
by Tom Pawlowski

 

I wasn’t always a fearless zombie hunter.

I missed the beginning of the zombie apocalypse. I’d quit my job after a series of sexual harassment episodes, perpetrated by my perverted boss, that the HR department did nothing about despite their mandatory annual sexual harassment training seminars…  but I digress. After several meetings concerning the unacceptable color and style of my undergarments, as if I would shop at Victoria’s Secret to please that … oops I digressed again… I decided to start my writing career. It wasn’t going well. I’d pawned my TV and other valuables and locked myself in my apartment to write uninterrupted until I’d finished my book. So the apocalypse started without me, which was good, because that meant I wasn’t exposed to the short-lived virus, and merely had to avoid having my brain eaten by the unfortunates who were. 

My first indication that all was not well came when I ran out of Ramen and, having emptied my change jar and scrounged for coins between the couch cushions, left to restock. I stepped into a chaos of empty streets, shattered windows, wrecked cars, decaying bodies, and fires burning unchecked. 

Being the not so courageous soul I was then, I ran back in and hid until hunger drove me out again. This time I armed myself with a weapon; my Louisville Slugger bat, the same one I carry today. I looked both ways and saw no one and nothing. Taking my cue from TV shows I’d seen, back when they were still broadcasted, I darted from doorway to doorway, stopping to look for I didn’t know what, at each one. I finally made it to the neighborhood grocer. The windows were smashed and it had been ransacked. It looked dark and as scary as hell, but I thought that there might be some edibles hidden in the debris.

I saw cans in the shadows at the rear and ran back to grab them. As I collected them I heard movement at the front of the store. A figure stumbled into view. I couldn’t believe it. It was a freaking zombie, just like in the movies; shuffling gait, gray pallor, clouded eyes, dropping necrotic chunks of rotting flesh. I froze. It lurched down the next aisle over from mine, and still I squatted paralyzed by terror. I knew I was going to die; I had no idea how to defend myself.

The zombie appeared ten feet away. It looked to the left and spotted me. And I recognized it. It was my old boss, zombified. It gave me the same old leer he’d used when he made his foul suggestions. Anger built inside me, replacing fear. It came toward me, arms outstretched, anticipating an easy meal. I swung that bat harder than I had ever swung it before, and hit perfectly on target, right between its legs.

And that was the start of my zombie hunting career.