The Lobster Dance

The older I get, the more anxieties I have.
Let me tell you about them.

A collection of short vignettes that depict the horror in the mundane, 100 Ghost Stories is a series of pithy, punchy poetry that will leave you wondering if anything is really as it seems. Topics include “non-Euclidean geometry,” “suburban gothic,””detritus,” and “so much blood.”

The hyakumonogatari kaidankai (百物語怪談会) is a Japanese drinking game from the Edo period (1600-1868).

Participants would light 100 candles and tell 100 ghost stories. At the end of each ghost story, they would extinguish a candle. Legend has it that, when the flame of the final candle was snuffed, something frightful would occur.

Life in the 21st century is strange, and who knows what manner of ghosts may emerge at the end of our stories? (“About”)

The big box store
was open twenty-four hours
and what better time
to buy groceries
than midnight?
The hum of the lights
was comforting like crickets
beside a lake crossed with docks.
I was strolling down the isle
my metal cart in front of me
breathing in the fragrant plastic
when I heard a phone ring.
It was there on a shelf,
an old flip phone
buzzing as it chirped.
No one else was around –
why would anyone else be around –
so I reached for the phone and answered,
“Hello?”
– excerpt from “Story 58”

As adults we have studied
the science and poetics of dreams,
and we know
that all of the islanders
are nothing more
than memory fragments
of Link and the Wind Fish,
who are, in the end,
the only two characters;
but as children,
the situation
was both more and less clear:
by collecting items
and clearing dungeons,
Link was killing everyone. – excerpt “Story 23”

I’m particularly fond of the genre of “suburban gothic” and “what we don’t see.” (Full disclosure, the blogger is a friend of mine and I love everything they write, particularly in this genre.) If you enjoy a good “turn” like at the end of a tanka and an exploration of the sheer weirdness of life, check out 100 Ghost Stories.