INTRODUCTION by Toni Miller
The collection you are holding is a true labor of love, born from a conversation between co-editor Lindy Ryan and myself about the resurgence of horror and the many amazing women writing horror poetry. Now, months later, an idea birthed between two women who lovehorror is making its way into people’s hands—into yours.
As girls we are told horror stories dressed in the frilly, lace-trimmed guises of fairytales—woman trapped in castles, cursed into sleep and silence, preyed upon. As we blossom into young adulthood, we tell each other horror stories about girls who exhibit agency, identity, and are punished for it. As grown women we watch the news, rife with horror stories about how women’s bodies are used and abused, considered property, treated as lesser-than. With these experiences in our hearts, it is no wonder we choose to explore their themes with our pens.
Women are held to social and beauty standards only attainable by altering our bodies or starving ourselves, body or soul. These everyday horrors surround us, demand us to reshape, to comply. Body horror speaks to women in very visceral and personal ways. It is no wonder, then, that we gravitate to body horror: the genre allows us to explore these terrors in a way we can control. In a way where we take our power back, allow our forms the freedom to truly be our own.
I was blown away by the number of submissions Under Her Skinreceived, and by the diversity and truth embedded within each line of prose. While the theme of body horror remains constant throughout this collection, topics range from motherhood to social discussions surrounding our bodies to a burning desire to retake control, to be woman within our skin. As a whole, this showcase illustrates through words and art how horrifying being a woman can be. How, at times, our bodies at times aren’t our own, and how they can betray us in the most brutal of ways.
This collection is everything I love in body horror. I hope you enjoy it.
—Toni Miller, editor
WE
by Morgan Sylvia
We’re not what you wanted, are we?
We’re not the perfect beings you designed
Our bones don’t taste as you planned
And our dreams are dark and decadent
Far too gelatinous for your kind
I’m afraid we’ve strayed from the plan you so painstakingly wrought
You wanted velvet wings and compound eyes
Instead, we have leathery skin and pincers coated in keratin
We refuse the carrion you offer
And we only wake when the last light has bled from the sky
We know why you bound us and broke us and stitched us together
We’ve thought of these things, you know
Here in our shadows and our chains
But all is not lost, now, is it?
After all, we brought the things you asked for
The skulls filled with memories, the severed arms heavy with violence
The bones full of pain
But it was never enough
Leave us
To our glorious midnights
Leave us to our rage
You never planned for this, did you?
You stitched us together from a hundred perfect corpses
But this isn’t what you sought
You never thought that we would rise in defiance
You never thought we would rise at all
And yet here we are, standing before you in the thirteenth hour
Dressed in flesh and blood and bruises
Our torn striped stockings clinging to our battered legs
Turn your face to the moon, my mad creator
Before we claw your grizzled cheeks to shreds
Turn your shining eyes to the sun
Before we burn your sacred visions away
We never told you the price of our blood and our bones and our spleens
We never bargained the cost of our pain
Then again, you never really cared, did you?
You only wanted that moon-stained moment when feathers and claws burst through our skin
Let me ask you something
Did you ever factor the costs of your own parts?
Did you ever wonder how your liver would shine as we licked it?
How your congealing blood would run from our lips?
No, I thought not
We grow taller as you shrink before us
Your screams are out of tune, as were your dreams
We drink now the greasy arrogance that once rooted in your cerebellum
Your bones crack into slivers beneath our ivory fangs
We are your death, your deliverance, your reckoning
We are your darlings, your angels, your deliverance
We
Are your only saving grace
BEAUTIFUL
by L. Marie Wood
Beautiful.
Its tone, its texture, its interest: it’s beautiful.
Eye-catching
eye-stilling
encapsulating
enrapturing.
Beautiful.
Fluid
under the skin, rippling
roiling
churning
like the waters of the sea
like the boiling in a pot
hand inside to unravel the skin
peel it
flay it to reveal
Blood
red, like
roses and lips and apples and…
Banksia
Wild and pure
Light inside
Cut, cut to see the beauty inside
arm, leg
hips where flesh curves to make them look.
Breast make them stare, keep them shook.
Hibiscus to heal what ails.
Blood let to purify
nullify
beautify.
Sure
Unsure
But still, so beautiful
Even as it spills
even as it dyes
even as it boils, never diluting, never dispersing
Never
Because it takes its rightful place
Always
Always
Red and bright and dark and bruised
Always
Beautiful, trumping all.
The glint of the knife catching the light and before the strained edge
Stained edge
Blood red
Wet with blood… dense and red
And still
And always
Beautiful.
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