New Work: "The Stone of Sacrifice"

Spectral Realms #4 is now available from Hippocampus Press!

This would be cause for celebration in any case, but I am particularly happy it contains my new poem, "The Stone of Sacrifice". As well as Margi Curtis's "The Ghosts of Samhain Past", Leigh Blackmore's "The Adverse Star" and "Souls of Samhain", a "Weird Tale" by Charles Danny Lovecraft, along with new works by Wade German, ankh_hpl, Ashley Dioses, KA Opperman, Adam Bolivar and many, many others!

This marks my second appearence in this journal, edited by S. T. Joshi and devoted to the darkly poetical. You may order a copy through this link here.

"The Stone of Sacrifice" is the direct result of attending the Aztecs exhibition at the Australian Museum in Sydney. That's on College Street, Sydney, for you Cthulhu buffs. I've been going there for decades and have never found the statue, but this time I at least found inspiration.

"You may well wonder how the stone survived.

Wasn't it destroyed? Wasn't it cast down

when soldiers sanctified by shot and steel

arrived to slaughter its red-handed priests

and sacked their city, melted down their gold?

And how could it endure the missionaries

that raised their cross upon the temple steps?

Then followed the accretion of clay brick,

of roads and rails, and concrete at the last..."