Post-Traumatic Spiders
A poem from my collection, Sheet Music to My Acoustic Nightmare
My doctor scribbled in her notepad "What do you want to talk about today?" I was already crying I ate all the cough drops on the table when she wasn't looking Her dog was asleep on my foot. I just left my one-night stand in the parking lot. Frustration wore on her face like the foundation she forgot to wear "Are the nightmares back?" I spun my ring around my thumb I thought about how you said I wore too much jewelry I tongued the scar on the inside of my cheek. The tarantulas are everywhere. Her right foot tapped against the carpeted floor "You know it's okay, right? That none of this is your fault?" I didn't believe her. I felt its legs crawling up my shoulder. I watched it watch me. I could have stopped it. I could have said no. Fifty minutes passed like fifty seconds. "Same time again next Wednesday?" I nodded my head. I picked the spider off my cheek. I swallowed the web it had spun around my mouth. The silk tasted like semen and blood.
About Sheet Music to My Acoustic Nightmare:
Roll the windows down, wipe the blood off your cheek, and turn the music up. Sheet Music to My Acoustic Nightmare by Stephanie M. Wytovich is a collection spattered with dirt and blood, sage and corpses. The poems inside are confessionals and dirges, their stories the careful banter of ghosts and sinners over tequila at the bar.
These pages hold the lyrics to the beautiful grotesque that Wytovich is known for, but here she writes with a raw honesty that we haven’t seen from her before. This new direction takes readers to hospital rooms and deathbeds, showing the mask that was skinned off her face time and time again. There’s a brutality to her lines that cuts with the same knife she fantasized about, her blood and tears mixed in with stanzas as she talks about suicide and abuse, heartbreak and falling in love.
Written during a time when the road was her home, these poems were sung under the stars, screamed in the woods, and carved into trees. They are broken bottles and cigarette butts, stale coffee and smeared lipstick, each its own warning, a tale of caution.
Listen to them carefully.
They very well might save your life.
What They’re Saying:
“Like a candy apple wrapped in razor wire, Sheet Music will make you bleed with every bite, but you won’t be able to stop….simply outstanding.” —Maria Alexander, Bram Stoker Award-winning author of Snowed
“…a mixed tape of atonement played along a roadway of righteous sin, where the crimson line of the horizon is either the dawning of redemption or the pyre of bridges set aflame. One cannot learn to write with such brutal honesty as Stephanie M. Wytovich, it must be earned. And the lessons hurt. This is the raw voice of angst and alienation from one of the most esteemed authors of dark poetry, operating at her peak of ability. Strap in and hold on. It’s a harrowing ride.” —Brian Kirk, Bram Stoker-nominated author of We Are Monsters
“You might think you know what you’re getting into with this collection of haunted road trips, erotic regrets, and dangerous, devious desires, especially if you’ve read Wytovich’s other books of poetry. But this Acoustic Nightmare feels far more personal and profound than her earlier dark works…” —Michael Arnzen, Bram Stoker Award-winning poet and author of Grave Markings
“Wytovich gives the reader an enticing mix of poems written as personal confessionals…Check it out!” —Marge Simon, co-author of Satan’s Sweethearts
“A heart-juddering ride along serpentine nightmares paved with intimate evocations of self-torment, poisoned kisses, and lying tongues.” —Erik Hofstatter, author of Rare Breeds
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I just bought the book
I
!!!!!!!!
I just
thats incredible