The Year's Best Horror Stories: XVIII

Narcopolis by WAYNE ALIEN SALLEE

Nicotine grey town

of snot-ringed corridors

thriving behind a billion

jellied eyelids,

each chance visit

slivers our existence:

name your poison, or

the house special,

at the bar beneath

the elevated hell

as an eager man

in a ridiculous tie

puts gun to teeth

and sleeps

while cameras voice their soothing purr.

Drink deep but don't crowd,

big as you might be

loved by all;

the retarded killer prances

misunderstanding the shrieks

of each night's degradations

before curling around

a dull corner

the grey is alive

with daddy sounds

guttural and snorting:

her mouth a scream —

ing window,

storm pains intact.

Whenever daddy sleeps fetal

(on the couch so plump)

after his little french death,

she dreams

the space shuttle explodes

in creamy white smiles

: for that is all we do

in Narcopolis, forthe bloated present

is too much. The past

denied, the future defiled.

Narcopolis AKA Prescription

City AKA Smallville ad nauseum,

the one true inner city

where pregnant leeches dangle

from the rusted streetlamps

of what little memory remains

coexist with those

of night, L.A.

freeways intersect

an Arkham dirtroad,

a dead king performs

endless benedictions

of medley in a sea

eternally October

(C C Rider)

(C C Rider)

(I said) is it a dream

when chitinous

souls shove

communion

wafers

into vacant windows,

ghastly parking lots,

to insure that

the virgin straddles truth?|

Or is this, too,

a wanting release,

a discharge of reason,

as opposed to sailing

off to Key Largo

between blinks,with a full deck brimming

of anal-retentive harlequins

Come. Run on a cool

ribbon of intestine.

You know the score

or you wouldn't be asking.

endlessly October… but

for a breezeway seventeen

molecules long: a favorite

spot of Mary Kelly,

and Jack the Ripper's

last known victim laps

at gutter surf

the texture of Kennedy's

blood. The causeway

is refuge for the clinically

sane, its sole light

a Cerveza Fria sign

dangling hypnotically

from a pile of eye

sockets, a legend in neon.

The prima donna of Spitalfields

hails claim to each brittle

handhold in the dirt,

and each glance

of her smiling eyelids

reminds us of those in 'Nam

or Iran, a field near Countryside,

or basement abattoir in Ogden, Utah.Those who knew that the worst

of their lives, wafer-

thin yet lingering,

was all that kept them

from this ghastly, cramped

town that Kelly calls home.

The guns are cocked

clothes removed

hydrochloric acid poured.

Ready. Steady. Go.

Forget the demographics

of suicides and addicts;

anyone's allowed in, and rent

is cheap as your own future:

the lambent american scream.

At 2 am, the fear is gone,

and the background dirges

are sung by Mary and Rhoda and Archie

and Bob, rerun refugees

from SitCom City (Boy the way

Glenn Miller played…) and the streets,

the streets washed blue, sometimes

blue mixed with pale, and a gentle

wind moans take me now.

Release yourself to the void,

let it suck your pleasure dry.

Think of where those years have gone:

syndicated sitcoms now a generation

old. You can check out of this town

any time you like, but time

is not what you think.

And where do these poetic roads

lead, if not to Hell, Perdition,

or Misteroger's Neighborhood?

What point need be made? Walk

down your own street in zombie dusk

and rubberneck the vacant eyes

of your neighbors at their blue,

sometimes blue and pale. TV screens,

man! Tsktsking the news of life

while lapping up lifestyles of the rich

and fantastical. Narcopolis is a way

station for the damned, guarded

by bored men bronzed by arthritic

balm, and haloed by bullet holes.

his kind cruel hand:

but himself the noblest

of citizens, though shy

of face and gaunt of leg,

a 60's videodrome (boy

the way I said C C Rid —)

searching in gutter patois,

running out of love

for pooling metaphors

vagrant fragrances

and a facial tick that

won't stay gone;

his whole benign being

contraflicts what

he's trying to deny

to die

perchance to dream

and the episode never truly ends…