John Edward Lawson is the author of 20 books and over 500 poems, stories, and articles published worldwide. Currently, John lives in Maryland where he serves as vice president of Diverse Writers and Artists of Speculative Fiction.
1. Faithful wife Remedy disrespectfully slipped Into her meal 2. Eternal youth A demon's worst weapon Drops become flood
The first time somebody contacted me with fantasies about my death I thought to myself, "Wow! I've made it as an author." I'd only been writing professionally three years by that point. It's easy to have imposter syndrome when you're new to an industry, or when you don't have a lot of career accomplishments yet, or when you come from marginalized groups, or when you don't have a university degree in your field of work.
Of my first disobedience, and th’ fruit serv’d whence the news is read, feeding to yon children cathode ray sustenance, th’ unborn made dead and th’ dead living.
A cornflower’s merciless expanse marred by ivory cataracts, illumination flitting and gliding across, across, compelled by the force of a child with a golden stone skipped on the river overhead and breaking its surface with impetuous determination. Blue virgin no more for this shimmering penetration, this thoughtless intrusion pressing between the veils hanging overhead. It rests on humanity with all the weight of a mausoleum, all the protection of a wax house. The veils are growing gray with age, soon to run black. Air slowly ruptures free from the lungs of the collective dead, swarming angry and circulating through nature’s beautiful ruins, stirring leafy columns of enough variety and splendor to stitch Roman eyes closed with phallic envy. Not the icy granite and marble of polished resting places, but the thorny precariousness of life.