For our first Saturday Morning Cartoons feature, we had to have some cereal…
Horror Poem by Julie Allyn Johnson
AI Art by Kiki Ren
Breakfast of Champions
Marva devours a bowl of Vampire Oats
before the ocher light of dawn,
smothering them with a chilled flask
of O negative freshly procured.
She beds down this day, pinkie nail
on her left hand ragged and torn
from the struggle—who knew a drifter
would put up such a fight?
It requires some TLC come dusk
but for now, she tends to her slumber,
to her dead vessel’s need for somnolence
in order to repair, refresh, rejuvenate.
Merely a wisp and darkness again begins
its descent. Marva lifts the worn walnut lid,
stretches her emaciated limbs, thankful
the sickle no longer catches at her throat.
Perhaps it became loosened, dislodged
when her eternal bindings were
lowered to the ground. The elders’
attempts to still her in the grave
bore no resolve whatsoever.
Her reign of torments, unimpeded.
Marva trolls the boulevards and waterfronts
for the flowing, red-cell sustenance
she thirsts for to satisfy each day’s
unliving requirements, those crumbs of
diet boldly enumerated on the side-panel
of her preferred brand of the morning meal.
About the Author
Julie Allyn Johnson is a sawyer’s daughter from the American Midwest whose current obsession is tackling the rough and tumble sport of quilting and the accumulation of fabric. Her poetry can be found in Star*Line, The Briar Cliff Review, Phantom Kangaroo, Haven Speculative, Penumbric Speculative Fiction, Coffin Bell, The Lake, Chestnut Review and other journals.
About the Artist
Kiki is best described as 45% Elvira, 45% Dolly Parton, and 10% Danny Devito. Though she’s always been a lover of all forms of art, technology has always been her forte. She studied computer science for four years before dropping out and coasting through life in various retail management positions. That’s until she found her true calling: being an embarrassment to her family online. When she’s not whipping up websites or blessing the world with memes and generative art she’s hunting for oddities at thrift stores or reading the most disturbing pieces of experimental fiction she can find.
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