Jessica Sabo won Second Place in the Scary Art Show Poetry Contest (Dublin Arts Collective, curated by Viewless Wings), with her poem “Death March”.
Death March by Jessica Sabo The dead come to her in moonlight wearing cobalt blue overalls, gold buttons skimming their hardened chests. A parade of whittled marrow-men, their limbs tempt her to follow them below ground. She stands in black, milk-white skin swaddled in thick lace, heavy as the silence of earth packed before dawn. This is her color — dark earth. The moonlight men are the same when they visit their queen each night: Swaying jaws. Hollow sockets. These bone-knocking servants listen to her speak of things that ward off eternal sleep — silence, thick as grief, the way her hands don’t fit together in her lap, souls who hide behind comfort when the thunder claps. How easy it is to die with one’s secrets still intact. She confronts her men one by one, holds their lifeless bodies against her own, stains them with a kiss moments before the cloud line disappears. Cloaked in darkness, they crumble at her feet, a pile of bone dust, worn cloth, weathered and wanton. They wait for her in the wind, in the bodies of willows whose shadows are claimed with the rise of the sun, waiting for the next time they are called to march.
Hear Jessica Sabo, and the other selected poets, read their poems on The Viewless Wings Poetry Podcast:
Viewless Wings Scary Poetry Contest Winners Read by the Poets – Viewless Wings Poetry Podcast
Submit your polished poetry for the opportunity of being published on ViewlessWings.com and being interviewed on The Viewless Wings Poetry Podcast.
Jessica Sabo is a former classical ballet dancer and writer whose work focuses on the intersection between eating disorders, trauma, and sexuality. Her poems and essays have appeared in publications by 805 Lit + Art, Inklette Magazine, and the Dead Mule School of Southern Literature, among others. Her work has been anthologized with ChannelMarker Literary Journal, Adelaide Literary Magazine, Damaged Goods Press, and is forthcoming with Quillkeepers Press. Jessica was selected as a finalist for the Adelaide Literary Award in Poetry in 2020 and is also the author of a chapbook, A Body of Impulse, (dancing girl press & studio, 2021). A west-coast transplant and Virginian at heart, she currently lives in southern Nevada with her wife and two rescue dogs, one of which has wings.
