On January 31st, 2020, I happily announced on my social media the second edition of The Dark Sire Literary Magazine and my contribution to it, a poem, “The Reaper’s Revelation.”

With The Dark Sire, editor Bre Stephens is attempting an outlet rare and commendable in the current magazine publishing landscape: A publication available both online and in print that focuses on themes of horror, dark fantasy, and psychological realism in short fiction, poetry, and artwork from actually ideologically, culturally, and stylistically diverse writers, with the quality you expect from a literary journal. Plus, Stephens has the academic credentials to back up this endeavor.

Visit The Dark Sire Literary Magazine website.

Read the Winter 2019 magazine issue in which “The Reaper’s Revelation” appeared digitally via Joomag, or buy a print copy from Amazon.

The poem is about several things:

The setting is dystopian, apocalyptic, and takes place during some kind of civil war. The character — or is it two characters? — who narrate(s) the poem is a Grim Reaper who is thinking about his life as he dies, who is thinking about the world around him, a recent battle, the situation he has found himself in, and the nature of mankind. “The Reaper’s Revelation” was inspired by a lecture I heard live from Dr. Joel Mullenix, who is retired now but used to be a Bible professor at Pensacola Christian College. My experience listening to his conspiracy theory filled lecture is one of the few times I have heard a speech, read a work, watched a film, etc. and felt as if I were in the middle of a fever dream, which is a feeling I hope to truly reproduce some day in a piece of writing.