Lori D’Angelo

Alrighty then --- So we burned the barn. Nothing spring collection new there. So many pastoral elegies lament lost silos. Also innocence. At a museum for the thousands dead, an image of a cow on fire stood sharp. Like a thumb tack, like legos searing through innocent un-attended feet. We didn't bury. Any bodies we found, we tossed off the precipice. If you wanted to be more helpful, you would have been. Don't blame it on your income needs. Sometimes success requires failure. Other times, necromancy. You passed the buck. You didn't anticipate its antler driven misty air return. And you won't anticipate mine. When the Ouija Board says goodbye, if you think it's final girl final, then you haven't seen enough scary movies. Here, let me help you. I'll put this New England Gothic home video in the VHS player. Yep, you'd best remember seven days. The future will make you wish you were raptured. But then again, you were always better at resignation than walking through. Fight or flight, you had a troubling but mostly concealed history of running. This is a horror poem. So try and escape. But you'll trip on tree branches on a dark and foggy night. I could save you. But I won't.  

Lori D’Angelo is a grant recipient from the Elizabeth George Foundation and an alumna of the Community of Writers. Her first book, a collection of short stories, is forthcoming from ELJ Editions. Recent work has appeared in All Existing Literary, Bullshit Lit, Chaotic Merge, Divinations Magazine, Ellipsis Zine, Major 7th Magazine, North Dakota Quarterly, Rejection Letters, Sophon Lit, and Voidspace. Find her on Twitter and Bluesky @sclly21 or Instagram and Threads at lori.dangelo1.