Happy Friday the 13th! Couldn’t let the day pass without a little creepiness.




The Merwives’ Café


A warning to diners who travel the way
that passes the site of the merwives’ café:
Before you enter to nibble or binge,
know of their pact to exact revenge
for the legion of their netted kin,
for the generations of fishermen sin.

Their cookery is as sly as sly gets—
human steak, casserole, sausage, croquettes.
The stew of the day is human rot:
manly appendages fill the pot,
seasoned with mud-caked fingernails
and tracheas stuffed with slain fish scales.
Refuse any slice of the slippery pies—
among the berries are fishermen eyes.

No dish too vile to avenge sea lives—
shun the café of the cunning merwives.