Artwork by Amy Alexander.

 

There Is Worse In Life Than What We Dream

 

Inside the belly of a crow, you are

ferried somewhere you do not know. Huddled

against your sister there, already far

away in first nightmare. Twitches, cuddled,

her tremors, count, you, wide awake, will ache

a similar amount to metronome

of horses’ hooves that escalate to take

you through a weeping woods. Farther you roam

than ever before, seizing while sister

would snore now less afraid asleep than you.

Above her nodding head, a sinister

slice, intermittent, carriage window view

of wrought iron gates, skulls that seem to scream

— for there is worse in life than what we dream.

 

About Crow Carriage:

Crow Carriage is a horror poetry collection set in the countryside, a Victorian England village populated by some terrible people.  One of them
is a nobleman, amateur scientist conducting a terrible experiment inducing nightmares and extracting cortisol from young women.  This requires their abduction, and this poem is the story of the abduction of two sisters inside his ominous Crow Carriage.