I’ve certainly never claimed to be Not Goth. And this poem, which originally appeared in Biting Midnight, is most definitely very, very “gawf.”

Howling

Moaning in the corridors
of memory for you
the wolf pack, paws wet, baying at the moon
a woman in labor
the sharp winds
ripping battle flags
half-mast
a howling
that hollows my belly
scraping my throat
with a thousand years of wanting echoing cavernous and watery… They say sound travels
farther through water.
My grief carries cisterns
of microscopic messages
down dancing, damp threads and the black widow
falls from her web
into the thorns.