This selection, chosen by guest editor L.M. Cole, is from Trick Mirror or Your Computer Screen by tommy wyatt blake (Fifth Wheel Press 2022).
Hauntology as Imitations
You consider the vicissitude of rituals, shifting in your thrifted nightgown to lower yourself in bathwater deluged with imported salts & sounds—but you haunt like a tourist, relying on being lost & mused, relying on being suffused with dreams where things that look like deer gather in their coven across the starry road, staggering & holographic. Pixelated by night, their bodies almost camouflage with sky but their eyes twitch beady & yellow from a flash of high beams—their glow unspools, stitching itself into projections of pale-patterned & astigmatism-infused light.
tommy wyatt blake (he/they) lives with his partner and fiendishly goofy cats. he is the author of DITCHLAPSE / [REALLY AFRAID] (Querencia Press); So, Who’s Courage? (Bullshit Lit.); NOW THAT’S WHAT I CALL HORROR! (Gutslut Press); and other titles. they are currently sifting through digital archives and graveyards and writing about their residual hauntings.
L.M. Cole is a poet and artist residing in North Carolina. She is the co-founder and editor-in-chief of Bulb Culture Collective whose writing and art have been published with The Pinch Journal, The McNeese Review, Five South, The Dodge, and many other excellent journals and magazines. She can be found on Twitter @_scoops__ and more of her work can be found at linktr.ee/lmcole
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