Image courtesy Produzioni Atlas Consorziate
After Suspiria, 1977 version
Run your fingers along
the arsenic-flocked
wallpaper.
Heavy in the labyrinth of
Mysteries, you come
to do the work
of a god you don’t
believe in. Red paint for
blood, Art Deco swirls.
Witchfinder ballerina.
Witchfinder Susie.
They can smell the
ersatz holiness on your
skin.
But that won’t stop you
Sarah Nichols lives and writes in Connecticut. She is the author of eight chapbooks, including She May Be a Saint (Porkbelly Press, 2019) and Dreamland for Keeps (Porkbelly, 2018.) Her poems and essays can also be found in Ghost City Review, Isacoustic, and Five:2:One Magazine.