by Juleigh Howard-Hobson
There is nothing like obtaining a new
poppet to use for old curses. To cut
it open, fill it with pepper, aloe
bitters, paper bearing a name you put
deep in the stuffing before it’s sewn tight.
Cloth arms bound, embroidered eyes blindfolded,
shoved in a dark corner to make things right
that could not be made any way instead.
Confusion. Dread. Chaos…they’ll slowly creep
through ether, finding your target, stirring
panic, affecting thought, disrupting sleep,
making sure misfortunes are occurring
regularly, causing serious
problems-- permanent and insidious.
Juleigh Howard-Hobson’s dark works can be found in in Dreams and Nightmares, Noir Nation, The Audient Void, Hypnos Journal, The Literary Hatchet, The Haunted Dollhouse, Eye to the Telescope, Polu Texni, Abridged Magazine, Illumen, Eternal Haunted Summer, Midnight Echo (Australasian Horror Writers Association), They Walk Among Us (Utah Horror Writers Association), and other dark places. A post-modern ex-pat drop-out, she currently lives besides a dark forest in the Pacific Northwest, with her husband and a dog. The dog may or may not be mortal. Twitter: @ PoetForest
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