There are strange visions in the Bible Belt, where my grandmother Witnessed Ezekiel's Wheel flaming Over the north pasture, while a Fiery Cross Awakened lonely sharecroppers from Feverish and weary dreams. The Sunday Morning Radio Gospel Hour would always Explain everything to me while outside the whisper Of a breeze was the Voice of God offering soft Assurances to the Carolina pines. Truly, they Were needed for as a youth I, too, expected Ferocious miracles: maybe on a foggy night in The bottom hollow there would appear a dark Battalion of hooded horsemen bound for angry Glory on some apocalyptic mission, chanting War cries while their exhausted stallions seem to Strangle in the haze of their own bloodstained breath. I also thought I saw their quarry in retreat, a field Of mist-shrouded tree stumps transformed by a Night of shadows, smoke, and moonlight into a ghostly Army of lost souls rendered immobile by the burning Shields of the Heavenly Hosts; yet even these portents Will yield to their own destiny for these nights, too, Shall have their own death rattle where heavy morning Showers will be a thousand silver coins sealing the Eyes of darkness, the rain sounding like a falling of Spikes, on the tin roof of my grandmother's house, The last rites closing the coffins of the night.
Thomas White has a triple identity: speculative fiction writer, poet, and essayist. He blends horror, noir, gothic, satire and sci-fi with philosophical and theological themes. A Belgium-based magazine, the Sci-Phi Journal, honored by the European Science Fiction Society with its Hall of Fame Award for Best SF Magazine, published one of Mr. White’s stories.
His other poems, fiction, and essays have appeared in The Chamber Magazine, as well as in online and print literary journals and magazines in Australia, the United States, Canada, and the United Kingdom. He is also a Wiley-Blackwell Journal author who has contributed essays to various nonliterary journals on topics ranging from atheism, Artificial Intelligence, the meaning of evil, Plato, The Matrix, and reality as a computer simulation. In addition, he has presented his essays to the West Chester University Poetry Conference (West Chester, Pennsylvania), as well as read his poetry on Australian radio.
If you would like to be part of the Rural Fiction Magazine family, follow this link to the submissions guidelines. If you like contemporary dark fiction and poetry, you may also want to check out The Chamber Magazine.
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