Tuesday, October 8, 2024: Alex S. Johnson's 'Wicked Candy Smile"

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                                                                                © 2024 Alea Celeste Williams

Bio: Alex S. Johnson's poetry has been featured in numerous venues, including 13 Mynah Birds, Black Noise, Horror Sleaze Trash, Misfits, Rye Whiskey Review, Dashboard Horus, and Unlikely Stories. His prose and poetry collections Skull Vinyl and The Doom Hippies were acquired by the Widener Library at Harvard University for their cultural significance. John Shirley, co-creator of the Cyberpunk genre and co-author with David J. Schow of the cult classic horror film The Crow wrote of Johnson's dark poetry collection, The Flowers of Doom, "Alex S. Johnson is the Baudelaire of our time; the poet of the underground." His upcoming books include White on White: A Literary Tribute to Bauhaus and The Flowers of Doom, to be published in an omnibus edition with his dark erotica/witchcraft/pagan poetry collaboration with Sandy DeLuca, Thunderstruck. Johnson lives in Carmichael, California with his family. 

Wicked Candy Smile 


The witching season beckons

hags on broomsticks sear the

night


Their cackles and cries of lust and fright 

summoning the wild


Wolves worm in slithering sequence, 

trapping their prey


Ravens croak, perched on a black 

branch 

pinions like watercolors

drafted against the


Snow.


There's a hollow at the core 

of the earth's

spine


There's a tingle in the air

The wind flecks the flesh


Mulled wine satisfies 

at the 

hearth


Where lovers lock

limbs


Eyes, mouth, belly, breasts

lush fruit of womb

turgid column, seeping with juice


The heart of fall opens her 

mouth

smeared with black lipstick


A howl of satiety encompassing 

eyes that dance with gleams snapped from 

spears of the 

moon


A wicked candy smile.


© 2024 Alex S. Johnson


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