HCE received a lot of high-quality submissions for The Brutal Issue – sadly, too many to fit inside the magazine! So we offered some of our shortlisted contributors the chance to be published on our website.
Keep an eye on our social media for more great writing like this, in the run up to the release of The Brutal Issue…
Revenge of the Sith
Jared Pearce
After the film I told her, for her
I’d turn to the dark side,
but she repelled my advances.
Years later, after the bunnies
clawed into her maple and pear,
devoured the poppy noggins,
she took my hand, placed a spade
in it, and led me to the shallow
den where slept the babies:
Do it, she said, for me. She
who graced everyone with patience!
She who forced on others mercy!
I held the blade above their nest,
hopped down into the popping
vertebrae, into the neat tug
of torn skin and short hairs stuck
on the blade. My heart was beating
in the lawn’s grave-bed, in her palm.
Some of JARED PEARCE’S poems have recently been or will soon be shared in Otoliths, Peacock, DIAGRAM, and Poetic Diversity.
