Welcome to the altar.
In this post, horror meets brevity. Where folklore is fed through mirror-tongues. Where forty-four words become a ritual—each poem a glyph, each glyph a mouth. My quadrille series begins with a beast (Altered Beast) and blooms into a garden of eco-horror, erotic dread, ancestral memory, and mythic longing.
If you’re new to the form: a quadrille is a poem of exactly 44 words. No more, no less. It’s a constraint that sharpens the blade. It’s a challenge that I learned about from the dVerse community. And when I pair it with horror, ritual, and folklore, it becomes a vessel for transformation.
Below, I’ve organized the series into thematic sets—each one a doorway into a different genre of poetic ritual. Click through. Read aloud. Step inside.
🩸 I. Body Horror & Ritual Transformation
These poems explore the grotesque beauty of becoming—where flesh is a site of memory, resistance, and myth. Transformation is not metaphor here. It’s sacred violence.
- 🔗 Altered Beast: The origin glyph. A face worn until it grows teeth.
- 🔗 Dragged Into the Abyss: Erotic annihilation. A lover becomes a leviathan.
- 🔗 Booze and Bliss: Pleasure as ritual. Intoxication as communion.
- 🔗 Evidence of the Night: Forensic romance. Tracing aftermath like blood spatter.
🌿 II. Eco-Horror & Mythic Collapse
Here, the earth remembers. These quadrilles explore ecological dread, consumption, and the sacred violence of nature reclaiming its due.
- 🔗 Mirror-Fed Tongues: Consumption becomes collapse. A mirror that feeds.
- 🔗 The Garden’s Mouth: Soil opens. Ritual blooms. You step in.
💔 III. Love, Longing & Possession
These poems are tender horrors—exploring intimacy, grief, and the haunting residue of connection. Desire is sacred. Loss is ritual.
- 🔗 Can I Keep You?: A question asked with claws behind the back.
- 🔗 Contours of Lost Love: Grief mapped like a landscape. Memory as terrain.
🔥 IV. Carnal Radiance & Ritual Joy
Not all rituals are dark. These quadrilles celebrate flesh, absurdity, and the sacred joy of being alive. Humor and heat meet myth.
- 🔗 Radiance: A burst of sensual light.
- 🔗 Fridays Are for Humping: Carnal absurdity. Sacred play.
🕯️ Why Quadrille? Why Horror?
Because horror is ritual and because brevity is power. Because forty-four words can hold a scream, a prayer, a myth. These poems are not just written—they are performed, remembered, and re-entered. Each one is a glyph in a larger spell. A beast with many mouths.
📣 Join the Ritual
This series is part of my broader literary project: Folklore and Flesh. These quadrilles are the bones beneath the stories, the chants beneath the prose. Whether exploring eco-collapse, erotic dread, or ancestral memory, the quadrille come to be my ritual form.
If you’ve read one, you’ve stepped into the circle. If you’ve read them all, you’ve walked the spiral.
Thank you for visiting with us. For more Poetry or Literature related content, visit our blog at The Ritual. Copyright Mind on Fire Books.
Folklore and Flesh: A Dark Fiction Collection of Folklore and Body Horror
Step into the uncanny with Folklore and Flesh—a collection of visceral horror stories and haunting poems that blur the boundaries between myth and the body. From ancient rituals and supernatural transformations to the raw ache of grief and memory, these tales invite you to explore the shadowed places where folklore becomes flesh.
This collection binds 10 creative short stories and a dozen visceral poems.
ARC Release: October 11th (Myths and Legends Day)
Presale Opens: November 20th (Blotmonath – Month of Sacrifice)
Author of dark fiction collection, “Folklore and Flesh” and Willy Martinez is also featured in our anthology Mad Men.
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