The Apocalyptic Mannequin

By Stephanie M. Wytovich

Doomsday is here and the earth is suffering with each breath she takes. Whether it’s from the nuclear meltdown, the wrath of the Four Horsemen, a war with technology, or a consequence of our relationship with the planet, humanity is left buried and hiding, our bones exposed, our hearts beating somewhere in our freshly slit throats.

This is a collection that strips away civilization and throws readers into the lives of its survivors. The poems inside are undelivered letters, tear-soaked whispers, and unanswered prayers. They are every worry you’ve had when your electricity went out, and every pit that grew in your stomach watching the news at night. They are tragedy and trauma, but they are also grief and fear, fear of who—or what—lives inside us once everything is taken away.

These pages hold the teeth of monsters against the faded photographs of family and friends, and here, Wytovich is both plague doctor and midwife, both judge and jury, forever searching through severed limbs and exposed wires as she straddles the line evaluating what’s moral versus what’s necessary to survive.

What’s clear though, is that the world is burning and we don’t remember who we are.

So tell me: who will you become when it’s over?

"Reading this collection is like dancing through Doomsday, intoxicated by the destructive, decadent truth of desire in our very mortality." --Saba Syed Razvi, author of Heliophobia and In the Crocodile Gardens

"Vivid, each word a weight on your tongue, these poems taste of metal and ash with a hint of spice, smoke. She reminds us the lucky ones die first, and those who remain must face the horrors of a world painted in blisters and fear." --Todd Keisling, author of Ugly Little Things and Devil's Creek

"Set in a post-apocalyptic world that at times seems all too near, Wytovich's poems conjure up frighteningly beautiful and uncomfortably prescient imagery." --Claire C. Holland, author of I Am Not Your Final Girl

"A surreal journey through an apocalyptic wasteland, a world that is terrifyingly reminiscent of our own even as the blare of evacuation alarms drowns out the sizzle of acid rain, smiling mannequins bear witness to a hundred thousand deaths, and "the forest floor grows femurs in the light of a skeletal moon."--Christa Carmen, author of Something Borrowed, Something Blood-Soaked

"Like a doomsday clock fast-forwarding to its final self-destruction, Wytovich's poetry will give you whiplash as you flip through page after page. The writing here is ugly yet beautiful. It reads like a disease greedily eating up vital organs. The apocalypse has arrived and it couldn't be more intoxicating!"
--Max Booth III, author of Carnivorous Lunar Activities

• Language: English
• Publisher: Raw Dog Screaming Press
• Release date: Sep 26, 2019
• ISBN: 9781947879133

Book preview

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Author’s Note:

when I think about what scares me lately, it’s being cheated out of time and having my home, my family and friends, all those delicious possibilities and opportunities in life taken away from me too early and without my say. My fears also live in the loss of my rights and my freedom to do and say and go as I please, and so I stay up at night, losing sleep, getting angry, all while praying that day won’t be today, that it won’t be tomorrow…that it [and it is a wealth of endless horrors that we probably can’t even begin to imagine] won’t happen at all.

As such, this book is my apocalypse cry, my doomsday preparation list. I hope that it’s a collection of nightmares, but the reality is that some of the monsters are getting bigger and stronger these days, so this book is also a petition, a fight song. It’s a reminder of past disasters, of current tragedies. A warning about the future we carve out for ourselves.

So read these poems and hold your loved ones close. Use your voice to stand up for others, and when/if you see someone who needs help, who needs evacuated, who needs a drink of fresh water or the comfort of a warm meal, open your heart and your homes to help them.

Because in the end, we’re all in this together.

And no one should have to go through this alone.

—Stephanie M. Wytovich

June 12, 2019

Eat the Breath of the Apocalypse

In the event of cigarettes lit by nuclear explosions,

I will stand naked in my burning, the thoughts of

broken porcelain and worms in my mouth

the safety net I need to climb into bed at night.

Tell me: does the sight of dissection scare you? Let me

show you my throat, how it swallows discarded

receipts and digital footprints, the way my stomach

acid dissolves Twitter handles and retweets like

rotten, pre-chewed food.

I think the smoke in my lungs has killed the host

family living inside of me. Can you turn up the music

to Doomsday? I would dance, but I can’t feel my skin,

these bones are like paper, like eyelashes flapping in the wind.

Outside the trees are melting. My car is idle,

its tires slashed, its horn removed. In the distance

the screams of gods filter through my radio,

their feasts a reminder of why I eat the breath

they wasted on my birth.

Behind the Genetic Reaping

The world, a soon-to-be hospice,

brings with it a creature, a monster,

a culmination of everything less-than-desired,

an inactive participant, dormant, asleep;

yet there’s a stewing in the after-wake of medical nightmare,

this freak-show discovery,

this harbinger of mutation,

it waits in syringes-induced comas

hesitates in its failed posthumous abortion

for inside this genetic accident,

there exists the hardship of weakness,

an off-color, misbranded creation

that looks different than those around it;

a blinking taboo, a wheezing unmentionable

there’s a crack in the system, a fracture in the plan

But, hear me, death-bed inhabitants!

Listen close: there’s a reaper in your head.

A slave to the dominance of survival,

there’s a cowering, a receding back to black,

a hanging in its suspended womb, this miscarriage-survived;

it was created to suffer, to duel out the agony of existence,

to force feed humanity its political agenda of hate;

like a well-oiled mechanical mutant,

it writhes in declination with each breath,

a recessive abomination, disease-ridden and paled,

it feasts on your supply of white blood cells and hope,

a meat suit siphoned, a psychic heretic

it will eat you to survive, harvest you to laugh.

Greetings from the New World

The first blast popped my ear drum, its sound like

gunfire in my head; I didn’t open my eyes for three days,

couldn’t breathe without wondering if that air would be my last,

if the taste of metal would ever leave my mouth.

I boarded up windows, nailed the doors shut, but mostly,

I got used to darkness, got used to their screaming,

their gnawing and desperation, how they begged

to be let in, each plea a curse, a velvet-coated lie.

It was weeks before I first saw them, how they

threw their bodies against the door, bashed their heads

against the kitchen windows, their hands like bloody

fillets slapping against glass as they fed, each slaughter

a mockery of my unwillingness, every murder a reminder

of what happens when warm flesh meets the new world.

When the World Began to Swell

The ground shook, cracked like dry skin

when the gas escaped, floated up in the sky

like a quiet green whisper. Leaves fell from trees,

their bodies like parachutes, like angel wings

feathering down to the floor in autumnal blankets.

It’s been months since the fumes, since the jade

smoke hit the air. Bodies grew in their