My creepy poem “The Laughter of Dead Children” is included in the second edition of GrimCorps, that classy dark literary journal from the Great NorthWest. The electronic copy is a free download and I’m pleased to be included in a collection of such nice work. It’s available now so, please check it out.
The poem itself came to me in a flash of inspiration after ReaderCon this year. One of the folks I really connected with was Daniel Jose Older, a writer of dark urban speculative fiction, rich in setting and actual grit. There’s a lot to like about his writing — and even more to like about him — but one of his stories in Salsa Nocturna
features the ghosts of dead children appear and what struck me was that he was wrong. That’s not what REAL child-ghosts are like, I thought, slightly aware of how psychotic that assertion might sound to some folks. I scrawled the first draft of the poem quite literally on the corner of the bookmark I was using and I carried that scrap around with me until I had a chance to tap it into my smartphone for further revision. Whenever I had a spare moment, waiting in line for instance, I’d fiddle and brood over the piece. Eventually I polished the language and clarified the vision until it became the weird little gem that it is now.
But please, let me know: Did get it right? How do you experience the ghosts of children?