The Presence & A Crowded Wood

ANDREW BRENZA is the author of the hybrid novel WRYTHM (Montag) and the visual poetry collections Colorways (Anhinga) and Smear (BlazeVOX). His speculative, formal poetry has appeared in or is forthcoming from Strange Horizons, The Lyric, The Orchards, Blue Unicorn, Spectral Realms, Space & Time Magazine, Bewildering Stories, Dark Horses, The Dawntreader and Altered Reality.

The Presence 

Venus, Auriga and the crescent moon 

Westward jeweled horizon’s sinking crown. 

But earthshine haunted like an ancient rune 

The filmy darkness of an eye so bound, 


And bade the draping shadows’ lightless dance 

That quickened clement blood to wild storm, 

Whose conjured stillness from an eyeless glance 

Tempted formless presence to the verge of form. 

A Crowded Wood 

Beneath a grate of autumn clouds, I stood 

Breathless as a stone, in a crowded wood, 

Among the dusty litter of the leaves 

That blanketed the roots of barren trees. 


And still I sang of winter’s coming pall  

As though the dead could sing themselves to sleep; 

And so I made a feather of the fall 

Where prying death and time go plunging deep.