Author Jay Sturner

And then the angel said, “Congrats on your passing over! The Afterlife welcomes you, it’s going to be great! But first, a word from our sponsors . . . ”

Officially autumn, but the leaves have only just begun to change: a splash of red here, a wisp of yellow there. It’s as if an uncountable number of dripping paintbrushes are poised over the land, silently waiting to angle down and start their work.

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 ...

Snuggled deep within the soft, lime-green rug of her moth, Luna begins to wake. Slowly she uncurls out of snail-shell form—gold limbs stretching thin—and yawns a dew bubble. Lids lift musically over black, bulbous eyes, her ultraviolet dreams dispersing on the breeze. Twilight descends, and Luna and her moth settle into a spot at the open window. Others arrive presently. Polyphemus, Cecropia, Sphinx, Imperial, Io—all alight on the peeling white frame. Inside, a poet stares deeply into a pool of candlelight; intent, perhaps, on finding just the right words for something. Please look up, dear poet. Look up and see us. Those that you loved as a child, that you befriended on moonlit nights and drew. Remember us. And tell of us . Butterflies get all the attention. First published in  Space & Time Magazine in 2022.

I lie upon the moss of an old-growth forest, tired from picking berries. Moist, curling fingers of earth summon a wandering mist to blanket me. I slide, sweetly, into dream. Sprites appear, beating acorn caps; fern fairies pluck fiddleheads; something plays a flute. All around, foliage churns with the emergence of myriad fae, their voices piercing the twilight with song. Gold streaks blink and flare—a display of fireflies whirling in the purple air. Meanwhile, tiny hands tug at my locks, toss and juggle berries from my basket. A dragonfly zips through the trees, splitting apart the music. When the song leaps back together, I join in…. That was a hundred years ago, in a childhood dream. Yet I’ve carried that song deep within me ever since. Always it has knocked away the sadness and pain—like devils whacked by a frying pan! And though unseen, the wee ones came back to me the day My Love died. For weeks they wept alongside me in that rain-swept space left behind, sang to me when I could n...

Her head rolled across the castle floor, coming to a stop at his shiny black boot. The vampire, dropping to his knees, felt as though invisible rats were shredding his heart. For his love had just been beheaded before him. And when he swept her up by the hair to kiss her goodbye she was already gone; and it burned him deeper than sunlight; and he wept centuries-old tears. Later, as he unleashed his rage upon Van Helsing for what he’d done, a sudden, clear change overcame him, guided by a feminine sigh from another realm. He stopped cold, silver eyes piercing his long-time enemy. A few choice words, and that was that. Calmly, he stepped 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.

An elongated shadow drifts across the valley and tightens about the cottage. Moonlight seeps through a grimy windowpane. The botanist stirs fitfully in her sleep. In a dream, the handsome face of a collapsing ghost whispers his final goodbye; he sinks, brightly, into the soil of her heart. Suddenly awake, the botanist spies a translucent orchid on the pillow beside her; dew catches against the touch of her trembling hand. Outside, the four arms of Ratri plant more orchids. Starlight shines through her silhouette. Joy takes root within the botanist’s heart, for the orchid is unknown to science. She thanks the gods for their gift, then grabs her Rig Veda and presses the bloom between its pages—a specimen she’ll take to the local herbarium and name, taxonomic epithet immortalizing the man she loved. Ratri smiles, lifts into the cool predawn air. There she breaks over the cottage like a startled mass of black moths and returns to the arena of night. First published in Eternal Haunted Summe...

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; ...

A light-gatherer zips across the morning pond to his mayapple village beneath the oaks, struggling with an upset stomach. Light from a ruby red feather—gifted by a hummingbird—sparkles outward from his tiny heart. Stores of captured starlight, moonglow, and suncrumbs pattern his fluttering wings like an enchanted mural. And in his hands are two sloshing buckets: trout iridescence and nightjar eyeshine. The fairy spirals to a clumsy landing atop the mossy rock. A yawning dryad waves her leafy hand. Kin awaken, begin to gather about him. “Is that all?” one complains, his internal light flickering low. “You’ve been gone for days.” The light-gatherer starts to dispense his load—the bulk of it will go to the young. “The human city grows near,” he says, still catching his breath. “At night, it smothers stars. By day its mechanical teeth crunch through forest and field. I heard but a single thrush, but two bobolinks. And fireflies sleep in gardens where I cannot go.” Coughing, the light-gathe...

My spirit left with the smoke of my body, drifted west to the Celtic Sea. It then went north beyond the purple mist to an array of singing whirlpools. There it entered a gate to the undersea realm, thus ending my incarnation as Joan of Arc. Here in the kingdom of Tír fo Thuinn I’ve a sleek new body of silver blue, with a caudal fin for swimming. After ceremoniously handed a luminous sword, a seahorse to ride, and a battalion of krakens, I quickly rose up the ranks. Strange, murky cities now fall before me: the blood and viscera of sea elves, mermen, and woman-o-wars swirling about in my wake. For a helmet I wear the carved, gold-plated skull of a rogue priest who stalked my spirit and condemned me to Hell—all for the “sin” of cross-dressing, a sin he himself was guilty of. What foolishness! And yes, the lore is true: after knocking the man off his boat I fought several great white sharks for possession of the head, and won. Today my name is Joan of Tír fo Thuinn. I am happily, if not a...

In fall I bloom from waning light, inhale the air of brightly dying leaves. In winter I stretch across iron skies and bathe in blue starlight. Come spring I’ll fragment into a million tired blackbirds and merge with summer storms. Always, it seems, my energies wax and wane. For hours, days, weeks at a time, I may meet not a soul. But whatever the hour, whatever the season, I keep to routine: stroll the lanes, admire the moon, wait for summoning. And when called upon, gloom and beauty uncoil at my feet like young dragons. I came into proper existence during an autumn equinox. Oh, I remember it well! Enticed from a soft pool of candlelight on an old writing desk. Brought forth by a man whose dark eyes beamed decadent dreams—a man called Baudelaire. All that night we wrote, our energies intertwined in a spectral dance wherein I sewed beastly wings to the black, faceless worms of his subconscious—ideas he promptly snatched from their chittering flight and imprisoned in prose-poems. Before ...

They watch us in secret. Eyes aglow in the wand-like blossoms of hyacinth. Watch as we jog, walk, bike, bird through wooded corridors of quiet rivers. They enjoy the birders most—the passion they exude—but question their dependence on binoculars and cameras. If only they’d be fully present with nature! They might then remember the language. And the birds would fly right up to them and pose, and converse with them, and tell their secrets. But humans have truly forgotten, haven’t they. Erected walls, shut their doors, kept wildness at bay; a million boundaries set inside and outside the mind. For this, and more, the fairy folk weep for us, their buoyant tears evaporating into soft blankets of morning mist. Yet still they watch from their pale blue towers of enchanted hyacinth, entertained by our strange attempts to slow from perpetual busyness. Holding tiny, binocular-like devices of their own—mock toys, really, like children with long sticks for swords—for the fairies see us just fine ...

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.

Hermit Thrush sticks to the shadows. When he steps out, it's to remind us that the ghostly voice coming down from the trees truly does belong to a living thing; that yes, he does exist. Mortal or immortal, he doesn't say, and I don't press. Then back to the shadows he goes, perhaps deeper this time, to that mysterious realm where the songs of all thrush kin are born. Painting by Art by Alyssa Gallery at  www.alyssawatters.com

I'm not often moved by European Starlings, being troublesome as they are to our native wildlife. But today, considering the extreme weather, all things are equal : Negative twenty-three degrees. Birds puffed up and deliberate. I watch the feeders from my window, safe, but concerned. What survived the night has a long fight ahead, an ancient struggle as pure as the arctic snow. Today, I harbor no disdain for the non-native starling — that single, disoriented bird I saw fumble across the snow, losing its wild symmetry. European Starling by Bill Ahlgren (From the book HEARTVINES )

Snow rests heavy upon the dim blue landscape, tracing and draping myriad outlines. Branches droop in repose as juncos dash through wild-haired shrubs. The waking mind is coaxed into a slow wandering — silence the treasured vehicle. The serenity placates, perhaps medicates. We inhale what we can of it, for morning quickly smothers the predawn hour. Soon it will heave jewels of sunlight across the white blanket, shrinking blue shadows like summer puddles. Snow drips and falls to the warming wet earth. We begin to stir within the transition, lured by its guiding hand. Soon our thoughts will speed, looping, toward the waking day. Routine will take hold. But before we step too far into the busyness, let us sit, selfishly, with one more cherished thought of a loved one, near or somewhere far; or the soft gray juncos, chasing and chattering like lovers' hearts; or a path along a bookshelf, all those soul-building stories and poems; or something else, anything else, to help temper the wor...

Such a little pop, a flare of dinosaur. Warmly brown. Curious, but no line-crosser; a blender-in. Life in small, tight spaces, condensed heavens (or eternal ones, if the fairies have their say). But back to wrens, to the feathered belly-laughs of children, bouncing and hide-and-seeking in rocky, mossy, fallen-log regions of the shadowy wood. Quiet places. Places passed over, underappreciated. Nearly forgotten if not for the presence and eternal song of the Winter Wren. Winter Wren by Scott Somershoe (From the book HEARTVINES )

I want to be that junco on the powdering of snow beneath the pine. I want this cup of hot chocolate to last forever. When I opened the kitchen window a bunch of snowflakes blew in, and one got caught in a spider web. I want to believe in magic; I want to have faith that my plush tomte will keep watch over the house. The blue-gray days of the season are closing in. I want the strength to slay a waking demon or two. Hope is found in the web of winter stars. Photo by Jay Sturner (From the book HEARTVINES )

This morning a Hermit Thrush returned to our yard for the season. I heard it— skreee! —as my son Garion set off on a mini-quest for rocks and acorns. A falling leaf—russet, corner-curled, emptied of summer's light—floated soundlessly over G's tiny shoulder. Hands in pockets, I stood listening to the harvest-time voice of my favorite bird, and watched as my son absorbed all the good of the world. And then it started to rain. Indoor creatures we became, once again: our human habitat within windows and walls, a cozy jungle of wired distractions. But with plenty of toys, books and music, too. More good things of the world! Outside I imagined the thrush flicking rain off its wings, its body perfumed by a northern forest of hemlock while engaged in a mini-quest for bugs and berries. Though shy, hidden, and non-existent to most, this feathered thing is no less important, or needed, in life. It, too, is part of all the good of the world. Something my little man will one day come to kno...