Back when the call for submissions first went out for Death in Common (the authoritative edition of which has just been published) I wrote the following poem based on the death of fictional serial killer Charles Lee Eaton (the anthology's premise: police have just discovered the body of Eaton [who hung himself] and the moldering corpses of his many victims in the basement of his home. Adding further oddity, the murdered figures' mouths are stuffed with wadded up pieces of paper covered in hand- or typewriting). Unfortunately, I misunderstood the submission guidelines, which asked for poems written in the first person from the posthumous perspective of Eaton's individual victims. So my initial effort was rejected (I did ultimately place two format-appropriate poems in the anthology). That first attempt, written for such a specific market, really can't be submitted elsewhere, but I just thought I would post it here in honor of the anthology's re-release. Here, then, is my own take on Charles Lee Eaton's mysterious demise:
Eaton's Last Victim
Afterwards,
He roamed through his basement menagerie of races and creeds
Eager to learn what these muted bodies had to convey.
He removed the stoppering wads from their mouths
And scanned the message in each bottle-fly-rife corpse.
The uncrumpled pages invariably sported their original text,
But Eaton spotted a palimpsest, reading beneath lines to receive
Posthumous reports on the numinous state to which
His forerunners had been summarily dispatched.
Except Eaton was grossly displeased by what he perused,
The fetid grievances aired by intemperate spirits
Who spilled words as freely as they had their arterial wine.
Magpie gripes about his wanton vulturing formed
The banal subject of all these embittered, telltale hearts.
Every last testimony he ashed in the furnace,
Then turned back to find the same balled gags already
Restored to their orifices, like unreasonable facsimiles
From the hereafter, from those determined to be heard.
His waspish victims continued to spew their pulp, and finally
Eaton--feeling cheated, not chastened--made his grim decision:
When he departed, the world must be left wondering "Why?"
No, neither tongue nor belated confession would stuff his mouth.
So he noosed himself tight and took the precipitous step
That censored his life and crimes into eternal senselessness.
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collects 41 (i.e. 10 + 31) pieces of original work by 19 different luminaries in the horror genre (and also features stellar artwork by Alan Clark and Keith Minion). Some of the standout poems are Steve Rasnic Tem's "How to Play Dead," which kicks off the book with an eerie narrative about a glutinous doorstep beggar, and Elizabeth Massie's "Spider's Night Out," which presents the holiday from the titular insect's point of view. Tom Piccirilli's "Phantom Pains" is a haunting tale of tragedy and remorse, and James A. Moore's "Autumn" wonderfully matches the bereft mood of the speaker to the season's dying landscape. Sarrantonio himself weighs in with a trio of amusing poems whose concise lines read like a cross between Ray Bradbury and Emily Dickinson. Perhaps the highlight of the book, though, is the inclusion of the first-ever published verse by Joe R. Lansdale. Lansdale's distinctive style and darkly comedic worldview are on display in a half-dozen entries, including the gloriously grisly "Observing Nature on Halloween Night."
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