Careful where you wander on May Eve… Photo courtesy of Germanywx; no changes have been made. (Source)
I am pleased to announce I have another original horror story up at my Patreon. “The Hungry Field,” up in its entirety, is a short and terrifying jaunt through the Springtime landscape. Here’s the first few lines:
It must have been some strange perversion of heart, some peculiar twist of concupiscence, that made James Harvey want to read ghost stories at Easter. Joy and sunshine stirred only sepulchral thoughts. Perhaps some deep paganism inexplicably awakened under his conventional belief in the resurrection. I don’t know. But as the days lengthened on the fields of chrome-yellow rapeseed, he turned to books that fed an appetite for darkness.
“The Hungry Field” New on the Amish Catholic Patreon
You can read more over at my Patreon. Please consider becoming a Patron today!
Just in time for Walpurgisnacht, here’s a short story that will send chills up your spine. “The Funhouse” is a three-part horror now fully released to Patrons on my Patreon. Please consider becoming a patron today to enter the terrifying Funhouse…
I’m very pleased to announce that I have a poem coming out in the Emma Press’s new collection, The Emma Press Anthology of Contemporary Gothic Verse. From the press release:
The anthology was compiled from poems sourced in an open call for submissions launched towards the end of last year. 294 poets entered, of which 26 were chosen for the anthology. Editor Nisha Bhakoo says in her introduction to the book: “My hope for this anthology was to showcase poems that pointed to the uncanniness of our present time, giving traditional gothic tropes a compelling, contemporary flavour. I not only wanted the poems to hold up a mirror to our post-postmodern age, but also to challenge the norms and unwritten rules of it.”
Although I make no money from the sale, please consider buying a copy of the Anthology from the Press’s UK-based store. Small presses need as much support as we can give them, and the Emma Press has published some really great contemporary poetry. Pick up your copy today!
Over at Patreon, I’ve published the first part of a new weird story, “Mirrors.” A popular writer moves into new lodgings, only to discover that the odd neighbors aren’t the only thing strange about the place…
Here’s an excerpt:
I still have not met any of my other neighbors, but I have heard them. Last night, I was woken up some time past midnight by several large thuds from above. It sounded as if someone was dropping bowling balls again and again on the floorboards. Just when I got out of bed and was halfway to making up my mind about whether or not I should go complain, the noise stopped. I hope this will not be a nightly recurrence, as it will surely impact my writing.
“Mirrors,” Part I – By Rick Yoder
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A British pier, not to be confused with a British Peer (Source)
My short story “A Walk to the Pier” – a surreal tale of memory, guilt, and telephones – is now up on my Patreon. An excerpt:
With almost a week gone by, Seymour Groves was regretting his retirement. Everyone had said that moving to Etcham-on-Sea would be just the thing to do, a kind of neverending holiday. What they hadn’t mentioned is whether a neverending holiday was really desirable. After frequenting the music halls, the buffets, the toffee shops, and the boardwalk, Groves had decided in the negative. Part of it was boredom. The amusements of his youth looked more tired than ever. He couldn’t, in all dignity, ride the bumper cars again, nor frequent the clubs and bars that had so enticed him in the summers of his early adulthood. Everything was sagging, rust-lined, smelling of piss. The beach huts stood in a silent line, all quite beyond repair. His own small flat was hardly more than a bedsit with a couple faded posters that shouted “Etcham! Poseidon’s Paradise in the North!” Perhaps it had been so, once. But as he was alone, he would have to find something to do. Groves had never married – had, in fact, lost the one woman whom he ever loved, Mona Deane, on the rocky shore of Etcham. He had not come back since that night so many decades ago.
“A Walk to the Pier,” by Rick Yoder (your humble blogger)
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I have a very exciting if somewhat tardy announcement. I have some poetry being published in Volume II of Jesus the Imagination, the hot new Sophiological journal by Angelico Press. There’s plenty of other really good material in the journal, too, including work by friends of mine. Plus an interview with the Revolutionary Army of the Infant Jesus! What’s not to love? As far as I’m aware I’m making no money whatsoever off this venture, but I still encourage you to buy a copy (or two, or three) if you want to read my contributions…or just the far more brilliant materials you’ll find there, too. Either way, I can promise you that Jesus the Imagination won’t disappoint!
A portrait of Charles Williams: poet, critic, lecturer, editor, author, sorcerer, mystic (Source)
The theme for this volume is Marriage. As I’m sure many of you know, marriage is an extraordinarily deep mystery in the heart of the Church’s sacramental life, mystical being, quotidien experience, and esoteric practice. To celebrate, I am reproducing here a poem by Charles Williams that scratches the surface of Matrimony’s essence. Williams, a friend of T.S. Eliot and fellow-Inkling to C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien, was a profound mystical thinker who kept returning to nuptial themes over the course of his career. The poem below comes from his first poetry collection, The Silver Stair (1912), a slim book I recently examined in the Bodleian. Enjoy.
Of Marriage and of its Priesthood
Charles Williams
Here shall no pagan foot nor claw of beast
Enter; nor wizard sorcery be seen.
But sometime here have all true lovers been,
Nor hath the tale of outland riders ceased.
With hands of consecration now the priest
Exalts the holy sacrament between
The altar lights. Now, if your souls be clean,
Draw near: Himself Love gives you in His feast.
Whose voice in solemn ritual lifted up
Praises the Name of Love? Whose hands have blest
For you, His votaries, the mysterious Cup,
And set before you the ordained Food?
Voice of Himself, to narrow vows professed,
And hands of His adorable maidenhood.
Rear a hill in my heart, O God,
from which Thou might ascend.
But o! How swift I overshoot
and rush on to the end.
For first Thou must come hallow it
with that most kingly flood,
the pearls surpassing every price,
Thine own most precious blood.
And though I wander far, O Lord,
from Thy most holy fount,
yet never shall I lose the sight
of Thine eternal mount.
The shadows of the day grow long
and silence takes the land;
still do I hope in Thy sweet song
and Thy high priestly hand.
“The Lord ascends with gladsome noise
and hath taken the better part.”
So runs the word, so I rejoice,
for He rises there in my heart.
It’s been a while since I posted any original wordcraft, so here’s a poem I wrote recently. The last part is a song. I wanted to hearken to the Scotch-Irish traditions of the poor folks who settled the Carolinas. You can hear me sing it on the embedded audio I have included.
On the Strange and Lamentable Tale of the Witches of Saluda
I. The Town
I saw them dancing at the old waterworks
with torchlight in their eyes, huge
gates to unseen countries
of the damned and dying.
Off in the woods, the fog
snaked through like a hungry hound bent
low over the scent
of some lesser beast.
The pines keep our secrets from us,
so we can forget.
Didn’t you know that even the
goats and horses have eyes, ears,
loose lips muttering imprecations
under their breath? Never
look over your shoulder
at a crossroads. Men have died,
petrified, for less.
Or else they shoot into space
and freeze in the rictus of their fathers,
grinning madly at the dead sun
below. I have drawn
salt from the shadow of your footsteps,
I have planted rows of teeth in my head.
What dragons will come
when I bring a scythe
to the harvest?
II. The Purlieu
You hardly know how dark
the young pine woods can be.
Not a patch of tall trees, mind you,
but ones that stand
just about twice your size.
Still plenty of silent life ahead of them.
You can see them at the edge of evening,
surrounding a field surrounding
a low crop of tombstones
all asunder and blurred
by the rain’s improvident hand.
The trees wait there, wordless,
dusk-bleached, lined up like so many
carious teeth. But they are not
what draws my eye—
the fathomless
dark that spreads behind
like a growling and
hungry gullet.
III. The Back Yard
It will not go away.
Momma said to come to the table,
no use passing your life
by the back window
daydreaming.
But I could see it pacing the lawn as I ate.
Huge, black,
unblinking, white
of tooth.
I don’t think it ever sleeps.
The heat of the noonday and the
shadow that flies by night
do not afflict it—
the stones in its shoes
and the rancid water it sips
out of our traschan lids
do not injure it—
the play of the neighbors
and the tumult of the street
do not distract it.
I have not yet seen it blink.
I have not yet seen it turn its gaze
from the house.
It watches.
I don’t think it ever sleeps.
Momma says
daddy woudn’t have tolerated
any such foolishness.
I don’t know.
It makes not a sound.
I think it knows what we talk about
in the house.
I think it knows when we rise and fall
to our prayers.
I think it listens to what we confess,
to our fights, to the whisper of the rain.
I don’t want to go out there.
I don’t want it to get it.
I don’t think it ever sleeps.
IV. Found in a Buried Notebook, Written in Red Ink
Don’t turn your back to the trees
or walk up the weed-cracked pavement
beneath the sign that reads
CAR ASH CO N LAUNDRY
and don’t keep the pottery you dig up
in your garden
bonewhite under the red
clay and grey sand. Don’t
venture to the edge of the field that
smells like salt
and don’t keep your teeth in a shoebox
(it might become a skull)
and don’t knock on walls
where there should be a door
or take down the portraits
of the nameless.
Don’t ponder what might have
broken the sign from the fencepost
or written its replacement
in an unknown script.
Don’t let your children go to the post office alone.
Don’t let your daughter play with the dolls
she doesn’t remember receiving.
V. The Song of the Lost Daughters
The young girls singing thread silk in their hair
Io Hymen Hymenaee
Io Hymen Hymenaee
Discarding the rest of the clothes that they wear
Io Hymen Hymenaee
Io Hymen Hymenaee
They join with the voices of the torchbearing throng
Io Hymen Hymenaee
Io Hymen Hymenaee
And soon they forget every other sweet song
Io Hymen Hymenaee
Io Hymen Hymenaee
Songs that illumine the queer, darkened lands
Io Hymen Hymenaee
Io Hymen Hymenaee
Like the water you pour over bloody hands
Io Hymen Hymenaee
Io Hymen Hymenaee
Her lace crown covers her eyes as they lead
Io Hymen Hymenaee
Io Hymen Hymenaee
Her into a thicket that smells of ripe seed
Io Hymen Hymenaee
Io Hymen Hymenaee
To hide from the angels that watch in the trees
Io Hymen Hymenaee
Io Hymen Hymenaee
And teach her the sacred rites of the bees
Io Hymen Hymenaee
Io Hymen Hymenaee
“An will ye cam back to yer mother so fine?”
Io Hymen Hymenaee
Io Hymen Hymenaee
“Ah will ye return to me, daughter of mine?”
Io Hymen Hymenaee
Io Hymen Hymenaee
“Ah mother, dear mother, I can’t come at all”
Io Hymen Hymenaee
Io Hymen Hymenaee
“Until I’ve repeated our first mother’s fall”
Io Hymen Hymenaee
Io Hymen Hymenaee
“The Sabbath is waiting, the dance oh so dear”
Io Hymen Hymenaee
Io Hymen Hymenaee
“To teach us the meaning behind every fear”
Io Hymen Hymenaee
Io Hymen Hymenaee
They never did see her again in the day
Io Hymen Hymenaee
Io Hymen Hymenaee
But once on a new moon, as old people say
Io Hymen Hymenaee
Io Hymen Hymenaee
Seven years waiting and seven years won
Io Hymen Hymenaee
Io Hymen Hymenaee
Seven years burning, but far from the Sun
Io Hymen Hymenaee
Io Hymen Hymenaee
Beware, all me daughters, what hides in the air
Io Hymen Hymenaee
Io Hymen Hymenaee
And never thread silks so fine in your hair
Io Hymen Hymenaee
Io Hymen Hymenaee
One of my ancestral cemeteries in Pennsylvania. (Source).
Alright, here’s another original piece. I think I’ve decided that I might as well publish a few things every now and then, since I seem to be getting a good response.
Passing a Cemetery Seen From a Train
We are not to count them,
the ones we make rare.
Nor should we come too close—
stepping in would strip
the varnish from our eyes,
making us like them
too soon. No, let this hill
rise away from me,
spangled with the dead
and watered with the whispers
of those not yet able to speak.
Since the response to my last two original poems has been so positive, I thought I’d publish a little more. I wrote this piece a few years ago.
To the Romanian
I am opening a window in my mind again.
I am peering into the sodden landscape
Of stone, snow, and parted lips of lead,
The chalice which catches the wax
Imported from Carinthia—like the
Ring that snags on the
Crow’s ashen teeth.
The shudders are snapping in the wind;
Smoke is rising from the valley.
The Amish Catholic 
