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POETRY
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THE DREAD
CORRESPONDENT
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Bruce Boston
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Bruce
Boston is the author of thirty-six books and chapbooks, including
the novel Stained Glass Rain and the best-of fiction collection,
Masque of Dreams. His stories and poems have appeared in
hundreds of publications, including Asimov's Science Fiction,
Amazing Stories, The Twilight Zone, Realms of Fantasy,
Year's Best Fantasy and Horror, and the Nebula Awards
Showcase. His awards include a Pushcart Prize for fiction and
the Grand Master Award of the Science Fiction Poetry Association.
For more information, including a bibliography and links to online
publications, please visit http://hometown.aol.com/bruboston.
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e wrote letters to the editor.
Any editor. Any magazine.
He carped about everything
from the state of education
to the cost of tenpenny nails.
He denounced the government
and condemned it to perdition.
He scrawled weighty and rabid
political manifestoes that were
published only in his head.
He wrote letters to friends
and enemies and former lovers.
Letters as loquacious and full
of bombast as a two-day gale.
Letters that breathed new life
into forgotten grievances and
launched a spate of new ones.
Letters so saturated with vitriol
that by the time they arrived
both envelope and stationery
were in a state of decomposition.
He wrote letters to relatives,
dredging up all their family's
embarrassments and failures,
reviving unproved rumors
of incest and physical abuse.
He toasted the black sheep
and roasted all the paragons.
He cursed families everywhere
and severed once and forever
the only bloodlines he had.
He wrote letters so vile and
chill they could be delivered
only by a demon postman
on the darkest winter night.
Letters rank with little horrors
that scrabbled across the page
and tried to sink their fangs
into the veins of your wrist,
to enter your body's sanctum
and release strange toxins or
begin building an aneurysm.
One day he received a letter.
Dusty and yellowing with age
it sits unopened on the mantle.
He is afraid to even touch it.
He knows the awful limits
to which some letters can go.
He is aware of the crimes
of which they are capable.
It has slipped his mind that
he wrote this letter to himself.
Or that may be what he fears.
© 2003 Bruce Boston, all rights reserved |
