Poetry by Kristen Reid

                 i threw a guitar at him. CC

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Snuff Out the Gaslight


She had no

flashlight

to guide her steps

in those monstrous depths

but she had a

gaslight

to teach her

to morph her

to make her accept the horrors. 

She had a

gaslight fog 

to burn smog

and smoke

to cloak her 

and change her

and drug her

and she let that

gaslight

shine like 

green sludge

into her soul

without 

blowing out

its flame.

But it flickered

and it faltered

and that girl

started to smell 

the satisfaction 

of a flame

trying to finally snuff out

and she prayed

that her lungs

would be strong enough

 to kill it herself.





The Final Girls


Horror stories do not begin

with hope. 

Horror stories do not end 

without blood being spilled.

But we wait patiently with horror stories, 

because we hold onto 

the anticipation

that there is either a satisfying end

or an end that will allow us to finally tear our hands away 

from our eyes.

This horror story will end with a final girl. 

and it will be satisfying.

The final girl battles monsters. 

She is the one who overcomes them. 

She is the one who ends the story in her own words 

on her own terms 

with her own mind. 

The monsters are gone when she speaks her story.

The monsters are destroyed at the final mark. 

The final girl walks out of the house, 

the forest, 

the cave, 

the clutches of death, 

dripping with blood

and guts 

and scars

and fatigue 

and a soul that has been buried, 

but yet...

she walks. 

She keeps walking. 

She keeps going,

because she is now 

ALIVE.

From death she has risen,

clawing up from the 6-foot deep grave of an end.

SHE IS THE FINAL GIRL.

I AM THE FINAL GIRL. 

WE ARE ALL THE FINAL GIRL.

AND WE WILL CARRY OUR MONSTERS’ HEADS BY THE SCALP 

AS WE GRIN WITH WHITE PEARLS IN OUR MOUTHS 

AND WITH THE TASTE OF OUR STRENGTH 

ON OUR TONGUES. 

AND WE WILL NOT BE SILENT. 

AND WE WILL NOT BE DESTROYED. 

AND WE WILL NOT LET THE MONSTERS 

TAKE OUR VICTORY FROM US.





To My Fellow Cockroaches


A bed. 

A wall. 

A mirror. 

And a grave 

to hold the teenage dream I was promised. 

But perhaps that grave 

was meant for me instead. 

Yes, a grave 

to keep that which crawls, 

decaying, 

amongst life... 

something that just 

keeps ticking along 

like a cockroach 

surviving the blast of finality 

from devastating bombs. 

People hate 

cockroaches. 

They are quite hideous 

on the outside, 

but I find solace 

in their filth and endurance. 

For I, myself, am a 

cockroach 

crawling through muck 

to only persist 

through the nuclear war

inside my mind 

and on my body. 

Because who am I to this world 

but a cockroach? 
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I am a Mary Shelley creation

of ripped flesh 

and borrowed existences

to endure in this world 

as a horror 

in and of itself. 

But this world does not realize

just how much 

of a horror 

I can be. 

I am working on that. 

We, women,

are all working on that. 


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Kristen Reid lives in East Tennessee and is a graduate student at Tennessee Tech University. When she isn’t studying, she spends most of her time writing folk horror and weird western short stories and working on her fantasy novel. She has fiction stories published with Broadswords and Blasters, Scare Street Publishing, The Horror Tree, The Sirens Call, and upcoming with Springer Mountain Press. Follow her on Instagram @writerkristenreid and on Twitter @Kris10BelleReid. 

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