Author Jay Sturner

When Confronted by an Elder God... Grab your phone, get video, try for a sample. Then run like hell to a scientist and co-author a peer-reviewed article—win a Nobel! Don’t just stand there and lose your mind. Going mad is so last century. Inspired by H.P. Lovecraft’s penchant for  having characters “go mad” in several of his stories. It  was first published in Aphelion Webzine in 2024.

Since their deaths they’ve sought dark skies, much like when alive, to avoid cruel eyes. One body, two heads, they just couldn’t win— The brothers got bit by two pale women. Hunched now, skulking through suburban night. Sidestepping islands of revealing moonlight… Sure, I felt bad for the brothers in life— pushed around, picked on, days full of strife. Different they were: mopey and plump; conjoined twins bent beneath a large hump. Tonight, eyes wild, they pound on my door: thirsty dead men; creatures of vampiric lore. Hoping for entry—they trust in my ways— for I never teased them in their living days. But the vampires scowl and turn away, for I will not grant them entry on this day. Dejected and hungry, off wobbling they go, head hissing at head beyond streetlamps’ pale glow. I step outside, yell “Guys, you ain’t right!” In a flash they’re on me with drooling delight. Now they’ve found their opportunity to feed, four-fanged and reaching for my neck to bleed. Seconds later they collap...

My toes squish along the path. I chant. I sing. I fling bird hearts and lamprey livers. Scatter bits of pig intestine, salamander bladders, an ape spleen. Then out I leap into the jungle-humid glade, where a gathering of lethargic, grub-shaped gods sweat beneath a continuous summer sun. And of these, it is the shadow of Slishra-Ew—God of Troubled and Ailing Viscera—I so gleefully enter. Falling to my knees, I retrieve a dagger and cut out my own kidney. Ow, shit , that hurt. I present the organ in my proffered palms. “O unsightly one—please accept this offering as gratitude for all the disposable poetry you’ve inspired in me; for the success I’ve had in ephemeral, lowbrow publications. Through fevered dreams, a nervous stomach, and other chronic ills, you, sir, have smeared your poetic influence across my shivering mind!” “Hmph mlughh.” “How did I find you? Well, first I altered my reality by self food poisoning with rotten meat and questionable mushrooms. Next I vomit-grunted a short ...

Her head rolls across the castle floor, coming to a stop at his shiny black boot. The vampire, dropping to his knees, feels as though invisible rats are shredding his heart. For his love has just been beheaded before him. And when he sweeps her up by the hair to kiss her goodbye she is already gone; and it burns him deeper than sunlight; and he weeps centuries-old tears. Later, as he unleashes his rage upon Van Helsing, a sudden change overcomes him—guided by a lonely, feminine sigh from another realm. He stops cold, silver eyes piercing his enemy. A few choice words, and that is that. He sighs, steps forward; a vampire opening his arms to the stake. Now he walks hand-in-hand with his love along the opulent streets of eternal night. First published in  The Vampiricon: Imaginings & Images of the Vampire , an anthology from Mind's Eye Publications, 2023.

Met a fellow botanist today in the amber swamps of Teegarden b, deep in Valley X. Now we’re together, trapped in the iridescent belly of a pitcher plant: Swapping photos of home worlds and loved ones                as our spacesuits slowly dissolve. First published in  Star*Line in 2022.

A man lies dying on a beach of burning smoke; one brave soldier among many. Gripped in hand: a photo of his fiancée. This he lets drop—his body now resembling a garden of wet, tattered roses. Despite his dimming sight the world around him has yet to change, to reveal even a subtle flare of the next realm. The waiting is… ordinary: screeching gulls, skittering crabs, sky the same earthly blue it has always been. After time unmeasured he hears approaching footsteps in the sand. His head falls to the side knowingly—Death, working the beach, has come for him at last. Thoughts turn to what Death now means to him, this corrupt thing that smuggled so many of his friends out of their youth. He shakes his head in anger, red droplets smacking the sand. Death emerges from the haze, a shapeless, distorted aspect of windblown smoke and fire. It becomes increasingly substantial as it nears him: billowing black cloak; gaunt face; stiff, exaggerated gait. The soldier scowls at the entity, harder than ...

All is quiet in this suburban wood. No birdsong, no buzzing insects. And then a faint sound takes their place, rising from beneath the ground . I get to my knees, put ear to trail. Something tickles my eardrum. There it is! A low, monotone wailing. Surprisingly, I comprehend it: the primeval voice of the fungal network below, a sentience merged with the amalgamated cries of nematodes, tardigrades, and other soil fauna—the mind of the forest itself! Feeding me lush visions of Earth’s bygone eras, of man’s destructive behavior. I take a deep breath, then tug a long strand of mycorrhizal fungi from my ear. A new sound replaces old: a pulsating signal . It’s connected, somehow, to the network of my mind, and it’s embedded with a command. On hands and knees it has me venture off trail, blankly searching amid tangled undergrowth and mushroom-laden logs. There I find a suitable indention in the ground. Once inside, I lay supine and close my eyes. Knowledge of Self sputters, starts to decay; ...

In resisting this place I have succumbed to the carnivore. The botanical eater . Now I bear its purple-veined cloak like a skin, stumble beneath its nodding maroon bloom as if under an alien sun. I slipped into it unawares, you see, was enshrouded by its hoary tube. And though I tried to bargain with it—promised to be an upstanding citizen and all—its gnawing enzymes neutralized me. Guess I should’ve done like the others: put up a fence, cut the grass, offered up my soul to the concrete gods. But who expects a pitcher plant in suburbia? Occasionally I peek out over the nectarous lip. All I ever see are tendrils of carrion flowers clambering in through the windows, or fragments of my childhood fighting to reseed. So I no longer struggle. Anyway, it’s too late for all that—I’ve been digested up to the neck. First published in Not One of Us in 2022. Also a 2023 Rhysling Award nominee.

He wandered by day, wrote poems by firelight, of dry riverbeds and nuggets’ golden glare, of Native artistry, elf owl wisdom, moonlight deep in the whiskey of his Mason jar. Drunk as a dust devil; he and the coyotes all howling—Awoooo! He wrote of city life left behind—good riddance!— of art-nature-soul in perfect harmony, his muses born of red rock and desert sky, painted horizons bringing him to his knees. At other times, in the grip of peyote, he wrote of card-playing scorpions on his sleeping chest, of snakes much too large, their rattles echoing through the canyon of his psyche. Nerves prickly as a cactus; all the upright coyotes dancing, dancing. In later days he named and spoke to boulders, wrote pitiful letters to his wife back in the city. He shuddered now beneath that dark, ceaseless sky, its star-oozing nights too deep, too unknown! Some say the self-inflicted gunshot stank of fear. Some say evil spirits. Others, artistic failure. Some say the West just ain’t no place for a...

Tonight we sense him, hidden in the sunken shadows of the bedroom: a ghoul moving silent, forcing quiet the other monsters. Chunks of enamel, grooved by nightly gnawing, fatten his belly. And our own teeth tighten in the jaw, fight the urge to drop and slip away, to escape his gluttonous rage. You see, the foul thing broke from fairy law: took to ripping out the loose teeth of children, a calcareous shit slipped beneath their bloodied pillows in a gesture of defiance; a jab at us proper fairies. And though imprisoned for a time in the amber caves, he broke free—saber arms flapping and chipping with madness. Now we wait within this toy-box, scanning the room for residual energies: the moans of bloody roots, the chattering of crowns, the hissing red of severed nerves . . . . Such things betray his whereabouts. At last we fly and crawl from the moonlit box, eyes narrowed and tongues writhing with an invocation. Oh how swift, how sweet the coming of revenge from its ancient lair! ...

In the rolling fog of the purple sea Where slugs infest the ridge And breeze-bent heather Tethers ghosts of the drowned Beyond the threshold of the mind Where sea hags howl at the moon And shapes unseen Sneak away human babes Lies the maritime trail I was warned not walk Urged by patrons of the old pub To return to America, and be gone at next breath: “For too tempting is the tourist from afar!” But I split my sides at their heathen pleas Doused their cares with whiskey and ale Till after a spell, I was cheered out of town Pushed along streets of leaping whispers So onward to accursed shores I went Bold with humor and the prod of drink Where fish-lipped merrows in cohuleen druiths Leered from frothy kelp isles And the mutterings in belch-bogs grew ever near . . . And the perverted, creeping shadows . . . I will never forget their dream-drenched faces As they sang and danced and picked over my end Goblets high in the salty spra...

He is making amends to his victims in a swarm of their ghosts, enduring the blades, beatings, wringing hands— each angry shade tearing at his soul as their own deaths rebloom and blacken. For thirty years, few women walked that city alone. In dreams they shrank beneath his police sketch, took to prayer in the gore of his wake. The law’s eyes went bloodshot seeking answers. When at last he died in old age, a pack of shades broke from limbo, scurried like bats to the gates of hell. There they howled and wept and dragged him away. He is making amends to his victims. (From the book  The Hunchback's Captive and Others )

Somewhere, hooks and chains hang amid peeling olive wallpaper on rusty nails once hanging pictures of other times— (before the walls shrank and took all the air away). Somewhere, the gentle tapping of fingers on the sharp edge of a machete leads up to the shadowed body of a man whose head is a broken light bulb.     From the book Kairos . Also received an honorable mention at the 4th Annual Skyway Writers Festival in 1999.

Death peeks at me through the blind spot of my dreams. He holds sand in his hands and laughs as the grains slip away.

Dress me in medical green, stick me down with pins. Take your shiny gold scalpel and operate on me. Do your best work, dear demon, do your best work on me. I’m alive you see, so do your best work on me. The sky’s beauty smothers all the scenery like the doctor over his patient’s misery. His scalpel shines gold in the white moonlight, slicing down through the muddy breeze: Cut me please. Fix me, please . Dress me in medical green, stick me down with pins. Take your octopus arms and rearrange the insides of me. Do your best work, dear deerhead, do your best work on me. I’m still alive you see, so do your best work on me. From the book Kairos . Also in SNM Horror Magazine's  Best of 2012 issue .  

I walk the quiet suburban streets. Hands in pockets. Black hood tight In the autumn drizzle.           A mind no longer my own.           The voice, the venom—           The awful mother tone. Chains hold back barking dogs. Instincts sharp. Teeth protect Their tiny green islands.           They stand their ground.           I grunt, I growl—           They yelp and back down. Who senses intrusion, murder, The way birds sense storms In the bloody summers? Who knew it was I that came and went Through the left open windows and doors Of complacency? The police don’t know a goddamn thing. Searching for me in the big city, In the summer, a man stalking housewives.           Knives fresh off the stone.           The blade, the butcher—    ...

A man alone one candle burning in a cabin with bombs

While I sleep toss a rope down my throat. Climb in— But beware of the biting words that linger along the throat. They are bitter, always questioning destiny's decisions. When you reach a path lit by embers grab your cross, and hold it tight. There, bits of heart decompose along the turn. You should cover your head, for it drips still off the ribs (Remnants of a splat- ter-ed love affair). You may even see her against the starless dark. A ghostly angel playing the loose string of a smashed violin . . . (It is true: sometimes the old sounds are deafening and you can't hear the new ones) But I digress. Follow the map that I gave you and gather the props as you go: The rusty crown. The bloody pile of nightingale feathers. The broken teeth of one genuine smile. And don't forget the dried up pen and quill. I should remind you now to leave by morning, for tomorrow I will sit at the edge of the w...

Regarding those non-native lady beetles that invade our homes in the Fall. Late last night the ladybugs came to get me             to swarm over me in the dark. And this morning I’d have woken up eaten             if it weren’t for the spiders. (From the book  Selected Poems 2004-2007 )

Curled up, asleep, twitching: dreams of worms, dreams of monkeys, dreams of a woman’s hidden heart. Trapped inside the shelter of a shell, shell- shocked and peering around corners. Never pushing either foot against the wind. Walk away from the phantasmagoric. Walk towards something real. Head hits the floor of this life; breaking, spilling, and losing light— black goo oozes from the inside. Consumed is that conscious hope , made of gold light and glass. The shattered remains lost or engulfed by tar. (From the book Kairos )