Within Me Without Me

By Sumiko Saulson

Dark poetry and prose written at the intersection of Blackness, Queerness, and Neurodivergence, where magic is mistaken for madness, organic hosts willingly bind themselves with artificial intelligence, and instruments designed for music are enchanted for revenge. Ghost ships embark on twisted, versical affairs with krakens. Phantom husbands believe “til death do us part” must be mutual. Keenly aware that we are worlds within ourselves as well as fractal instances of the world as a whole, these words ~ written predominantly during the first two years of the global pandemic ~ unite revolution, multiplicity.and a soul-searing sense of melancholia.

"Within me / Without me is a revelatory work, an intimate yet universal discourse on the concepts of self and society. Saulson’s creation will possess you: it will inhabit your skin, surge through your veins, and invade your synapses, each story and poem foreshadowing the ‘pendulum switch’ of acceptance and celebration that our new world demands. With echoes of Octavia Butler, Within me/ Without me sings with verve and vibrancy. A ground-breaking collection.” —Lee Murray, double Bram Stoker Award®-winner and author of Grotesque: Monster Stories.

"Within me/Without me is a collection of refreshing and diverse storylines in poetry and prose. They speak of how to be human in a horrific world, where complicated emotions from divergent cultures and society norms are like oil and water. Saulson's seduction pulls you through a vice-grip of social structures in marginalized conflict, slipping through scarred, but strong, unique, and imperfectly loveable. It satisfies the deep, dark thirst for the personal nature of poems and storytelling." —Rain Graves, two-time Bram Stoker Award®-winning poet and author of Barfodder

• Language: English
• Publisher: Iconoclast Productions
• Release date: Oct 3, 2021
• ISBN: 9781005096205

Sumiko Saulson

Sumiko Saulson is a science-fiction, fantasy and horror writer and graphic novelist. She was the 2016 recipient of the Horror Writer Association's "Scholarship from Hell." She is best known for her non-fiction reference guide "60 Black Women in Horror Fiction." Her novels include "Solitude"," The Moon Cried Blood, "Happiness and Other Diseases", "Somnalia", "Insatiable" and the Amazon bestselling horror comedy “Warmth." She has written several short stories for collections and anthologies, including the Carry the Light award winning science-fiction story "Agrippa." She writes for the Oakland Art Scene for the Examiner.com, SEARCH Magazine and horror blogs HorrorAddicts.net and SumikoSaulson.com, which featured a 2013 Women in Horror Month interview series. The child of African American and Russian-Jewish American parents, she is a native Californian who grew up in Los Angeles and Hawaii. She is an Oakland resident who has spent most of her adult life in the San Francisco Bay Area.

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Sumiko Saulson

Within Me Without Me

Copyright © 2021 by Sumiko Saulson

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, scanning, or otherwise without written permission from the publisher. It is illegal to copy this book, post it to a website, or distribute it by any other means without permission.

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Contents

1. Copyright

2. Flesh Wounds

3. Shades of Domesticity

4. Under the Water

5. Tapestry of Sentiment and Sunset

6. Regarding Nina Simone's Bad Reputation

7. Having Become Numb

8. Squeak

9. A Travesty in Timbuktu

10. The Mysterious State of We-Ness

11. In the Wake of Dreams Half-Remembered

12. My Love is like a Garden of Flowers

13. The Withering Brown Leaves of Autumn

14. The Distance from We-Ness to I-Ness

15. Your Truth is a Lie

16. Sleeping

17. The Symbiont Revolution

18. I Feel Some Kind of Way

19. I Am Not Your Trope

20. The Hills Bled Gold

21. Love Affair in a Global Pandemic

22. Homecoming for a Dear Old Friend

23. Captain of the Tone Police Force

24. The Latency of Racism in Sunny California

25. Five Hundred Years in Your House

26. Turbulent Waters

27. Generation X is a Mass Marketing Experiment

28. A Declaration I Shan't Recant

29. His Flesh Was Haunted

30. A Vacancy Wherein Once Was My Heart

31. Sentiment

32. About Sumiko Saulson

1

Copyright

WITHIN ME / WITHOUT ME

Dark Poetry & Prose by Sumiko Saulson

Edited by Emily Flummox

© 2021 Sumiko Saulson

www.SumikoSaulson.com

www.DookyZines.com

2

Flesh Wounds

Beyond worldly norms to which lovers conform

Lies the thing you will keep, be it only skin deep

It’s taste of fresh skin nurturing new worlds within

Tasted without care when we came to your lair

And we tip-toed right in, freshly sweat-soaked in sin,

And now, prithee do tell

Did we put you through hell?

Centuries ago when you walked through the sand

A sweet gift that was given to quench thirst-parched land

For the ground never blossomed with green leaf nor brood

And those newly arrived were left starving for food

Sacrifice must be made, of the skin, blood, and heart

You were laid on the land like a wet piece of art

For the new land to feed on and seed in the dark

Your kin sat by the fire as you desperately wailed

Skin alive with fresh bloom like a Green Knight’s Tale

Broken skin, Mother Earth, where the skyscrapers hurt

And flesh wounds then fester like oil in the dirt

When the night was quite young and the world still new

Machinations of men made a goddess of you

3

Shades of Domesticity

Horror Writers Association Poetry Showcase VII (2020)

On an upwardly-curved hook of steel

Thickened base narrows to tip cruel

Its end sheathed in fleur-de-lis

Base encrusted in blood-ruby jewel

Sits one terrycloth robe of a pair, hers and his

Only hers is skewered in the air

His hidden in abysmally dismal dark cubes

At the very back of this bathroom

Folded and still, now his name-engraved towels

O.R. stands for Oliver Reed, and the owls

That he loved so glare at her accusingly now

And is this shade of domestic bliss

His ghost drains her of life

And awaits in every corner

She wished she were dead instead

That Oliver might mourn her

Not til death would they part

At the altar, he’d warned her

Death come and take me, Shelly pled

Oliver’s towel in her hand wrung upon her death bed

Heart racing, skin gray, and wasting

Tired, at ill ease, body filled with disease

A maleficent wheeze escaped her bone-dry lips

While the banshees appraised her withering hips

"The time has come for you and I

To divorce, in the only way we can,"

She said, and lowered her head, resigned

To leave behind her life with a dead man

4

Under the Water

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Over sea, floating ye, staying abreast of watery crests

Midwinter air caresses curls unfurling over briny sea

Cool wet skin, paper thin… I can see your soul within

Every capillary pumping blood,

Intestinal processes digesting food

Your loving heart plain to see…

How intimate your transparency

A sea-deep mystery, stories untold,

Windows into your ancient soul,

Your eyes speckled, flecks of gold cascading

Within jet black coal

Encasing your exquisite charms,

Enfolded within my fragile arms,

I am the contemplator of your delicacy,

Hear ye now my mortal pleas

May your ethereal heart, thorny spine and

Eternal love be ever mine

Adrift on my back, your tentative fingers

In mine entwined

Long slender tail wrapped around my thighs,

Tendrils twixt toes

The smooth flesh of your undercarriage

Where barnacles grow

My flesh puckers where their tiny mouths

Burrow into my skin

Digesting the healthy white blood cells within

Risen have you from the darkest depths

Where men do not reside

I gave you a place within my skin

Where creatures dark abide

Do not leave me alone nor recede

Like the sand does from the tide

But carry me along with ye…

Astride my floating bounty be

Feast upon the only vessel strong enough

To return ye to sea

The curve of my hip rises over the crest of the wave

Like manatees mistaken for mermaids in ancient days

High upon my waist your appendages rest, rising and falling

With baited breath against my naked breast, bare as my soul

As we drift, intertwined,

Out to the darkest depths of ancient seas

Now the time has come to sink below, and mystery

Is akin to fear, I am not sure that I should trust you

But I can’t seem to do that which would separate us

So I hold you near and prepare myself, emptying lungs

Of unnecessary breath, as I prepare to enter your icy depths

It is good, I sigh, floating over torrid waves

Near watery graves

Past broken ships torn asunder adrift in somber, pallid fog

Your hand in mine, you guide me sweet

Through jagged caves of coral deep

Caverns stained sinister red with

The blood of shattered sailors misled

It is only I you chose to guide into

Your hidden realm of volcanic caves

It is good now, and gets better still, you insist,

Demanding I become servant to your capricious will

I kiss skeletal hands upon which lichens creep

Extending their long fingers aloft from the deep

The seaweed embraces their distended, rotting skin

"These are the mortals who have joined me

Under the sea, giving their useless lives willingly,"

You coo into my ear, tender and sweetly sighing

While my fingers caress the bloated flesh

Of a young merchant seaman beautifully dying

Become my queen, you sing in melodious strain

Of aural waves weaving in and out of the subsonic range

Your fingers are tendrils that kiss and caress aching skin,

Your hair smells like sea foam,

Dried kelp, and summer breeze

Think of the human life on which we shall feed…

"Be only mine leave your seafaring comrades behind,

There flesh is best suited for that upon which immortals dine

In the days when Poseidon was worshipped

And the Kraken king

These humans would offer me most anything, their nubile

Children fresh and young bound for me to dine upon…

Join me and let’s start this worship anew, the flesh of men

Will belong to you, you will dine on the tender flesh

Of misbegotten youth,

Called time after time onto rocky shore

By the lovely sound of your siren voice,

Shipwrecked and helpless

And waiting for you, brainwashed and given no choice…

Feast upon the maiden’s breast,

Tear her heart from her heaving chest

For you, my love, only the best in all things,

Trust and believe this true

But if truth it is not, and so I lie,

Think of the glorious ways you might die?

There is no need to fear the dark,

This is my kingdom, come within

What is there to fear, mortal?

Even if you lose, you win."

5

Tapestry of Sentiment and Sunset

Wickedly Abled: Sci-Fi. Horror and Dark Fantasy

by Disabled Authors (2020)

Chloe was a natural witch. The rocks called out to her, and the rivers. Tiny trickles of water burbling soothing sounds over smooth earthbound rocks sang to her as she strode past brilliant estuaries and warm grassy knolls redolent with fresh loam and newly cut grass. Chloe had a way of dancing around campus, her short floral print summer dresses dancing mid-calf against legs as long, thin and brown as cinnamon sticks. Her hair and clothes were constantly fragrant with spices and herbs from cooking, growing tea leaves in her garden, and doing kitchen magic. She had been speaking to the trees and stones since early childhood, but she was not a child any longer.

In her second year at Berkeley City College, she looked forward to graduating in a year and hoped to transfer to UC Berkeley, where her girlfriend Bethany attended. To Chloe, Bethany was made of magic…the way she glided across the green in her baggy camouflage army pants and black tank tee with a beret cocked askew atop her russet dreadlocks. Her magic was musky and bone-deep, from her creaky dark laughter to the way her round steel glasses like John Lennon’s or Harry Potter’s sat carelessly above her pert brown nose. Bethany’s round plum mouth tasted like her hip clove-oil vape, late-night snacks of cheesy puffs. She was encased in the aroma of forbidden delights from hot nights spent entangled in her arms (and between her thighs) in her purple-silk-scarf- and incense-adorned dorm room all Spring long.

One day Chloe might have a dorm of her own, but Bethany would have graduated by then. For now, she lived with her parents. And her mother insisted that she go to the school psychologist about the way she kept talking to the plants and animals. Her father, African and a practitioner of the Igbo religion Odinani, found her mother’s concerns unwarranted, but her mother was an atheist and didn’t believe in magic. Chloe shrugged and went obediently to the school psychologist’s office. The voices of nature spirits were the cause of some consternation for the nineteen-year-old city college sophomore’s school psychologist, Dr. Maya Robbins, as was the impulsive nature of the young woman.

Before Chloe Anna Mayfield could get enough credits for an A.A. in Psychology, the spirits of her ancestors interfered. They told her to take his text Totem and Taboo and set it to burn. Closing her eyes, she leaned back into the plush green lounge chair in her therapist’s office, relishing the memory. In her mind’s eye, she recalled tossing the hateful racist tome Totem and Taboo: Resemblances between the Mental Lives of Savages and Neurotics into the flames as they licked the sides of the stainless steel ash can in front of the blue and white fiberglass bleachers. The book hit the hot coals and disintegrated, tiny bits of paper alit on the summer heat like fireflies. Tiny fire spirits spread upwards in hot tendrils of smoke and flame, dancing in synchronicity as they rose into the sky. These were not theelementals known as salamanders to Paracelsus, but animist spirits known before the birth of the world in Africa, the place of our ancestral mother. Mmo, the spirits of her Igbo ancestors, manically giggled as the pages of the oppressor’s tome withered in the heat.

How long have you been hearing voices? Dr. Robbins asked somberly, her dour face elongated with a look of deep sadness she fabricated for communication with the most depressed of her therapy clients.

Chloe giggled and put her hands over her mouth, increasing Dr. Robbin’s impression that she’d lost her mind. I don’t hear voices, Chloe responded, refusing to make eye contact. The nature spirits communicate with me. They aren’t voices in my head, they are spirits. I told you, it’s a religion.

There was a way the rich cocoa-brown skin over Maya Robbin’s high cheekbones drained to a sallow, corpse-like ash gray when she thought you were saying something crazy. It was happening right now. A concerned, dark shadow settled over her deep-set umber eyes. The school psychologist usually appeared a youthful age of thirty-seven. All of her anti-aging creams melted away in an instant, leaving her furrow-browed and stewing in an authoritarian haze of maternal consternation. She looked her full fifty-five years and then some in its wake.

Was this lady seriously using the look on her? Chloe’s grandmother used the look. All black women over fifty seemed to have the look, an incredulous glare that made most young folks shut up the minute they saw it. It was like side-eye, only straight at you, letting you know the lady in question thought you were ignorant, insane, and all kinds of imbecile.

Chloe pressed a palm against her aching forehead as a blood vessel began to tick angrily on her temple. "I am not crazy, Dr. Robbins. Animism is a religious practice, not a