Brightness tossed from a silk sack spins in the wind, flashing light to dark to light and back again, caught in your palms and it shines cold, no heavier than a coin for Charon. The man with the sack skips away, long nightcap trailing behind, robes fluttering pale as ghost wings, black afterimage fades to grey. Treasure his gift against your heart as it starts to grow; but drop it before it swells too heavy, bores a hole in your earth, pulls in the tides like blankets.

The Philadelphia Inquirer has called Mike Allen's newest collection, Strange Wisdoms of the Dead, "poetry for goths of all ages" that does "a fine job of making the human scary and the scary human." His other books include the poetry collections Defacing the Moon, Petting the Time Shark and Disturbing Muses and the anthologies Mythic and Mythic 2. For nine years he's been editor of the poetry journal Mythic Delirium. His fiction has sold to H.P. Lovecraft's Magazine of Horror, Helix SF, Interzone, and Weird Tales. He's a three-time winner of the Rhysling Award for speculative poetry.