The Scary Abecedary

<p><span style=color: rgba(0 0 0 1)>With 26 poems teased from skin and tissue and veiny threads Brooke MacKenzie's The Scary Abecedary resounds with brutality fragility and fear. A startling debut and a lesson for our times. -Lee Murray four-time Bram Stoker Award?-winner and author of Tortured Willows</span></p><p><br></p><p><span style=color: rgba(0 0 0 1)>Abecedary [ ey-bee-see-duh-ree ] : The alphabet written out in a teaching book or carved on a wall; a primer</span></p><p><br></p><p><span style=color: rgba(0 0 0 1)>There are so many frightening things</span></p><p><span style=color: rgba(0 0 0 1)>And in imposing an alphabetic structure onto them I am attempting to control and contain them. It is a futile effort to make everything seem less scary</span></p><p><br></p><p><span style=color: rgba(0 0 0 1)>Each letter of the alphabet has been assigned a fright.</span></p><p><br></p><p><span style=color: rgba(0 0 0 1)>Sometimes the poems are scary sometimes they're gruesome sometimes subversive</span></p><p><span style=color: rgba(0 0 0 1)>Sometimes deeply personal</span></p><p><span style=color: rgba(0 0 0 1)>Because the definition of scary shifts and changes depending upon</span></p><p><span style=color: rgba(0 0 0 1)>The layers of feelings and experiences and moods</span></p><p><span style=color: rgba(0 0 0 1)>That cover our eyes like a film at any given moment</span></p><p><span style=color: rgba(0 0 0 1)>Our lenses shift and our pupils dilate and our minds go along for the ride</span></p><p><span style=color: rgba(0 0 0 1)>But there are so many frightening things</span></p><p><span style=color: rgba(0 0 0 1)>And they seem to multiply with each passing day?.</span></p><p><span style=color: rgba(0 0 0 1)>Will we ever be safe again?</span></p><p><span style=color: rgba(0 0 0 1)>Were we ever really safe at all?</span></p>