Scary Stories: Now Available!

The Scary Stories documentary is now available on Amazon Prime Video and other streaming services! It will also be coming to DVD this summer, following a limited theatrical release. It aired last year at film festivals in select cities across the U.S., and has received overwhelmingly positive reviews.

I am so excited and proud to be interviewed in this documentary, getting to see myself on the big screen and fulfilling a childhood wish to appear in the same space as some of our generation's most respected children's literature and folklore writers. Thanks and Happy Hauntings!

Scary Stories: A Documentary is now available on the streaming services listed above.

Haiku #10: we hold hands

My grandfather passed away over the weekend. He was my last living grandparent. This haiku was inspired by my grandmother’s passing in 2014, shortly after their 60th wedding anniversary. I believe they are reunited at last:

we hold hands…
the coolness
of late summer grass

"we hold hands," copyright 2019 Amelia Cotter (first published in The Sacred in Contemporary Haiku, 2014)

Poem #3: Him

April is National Poetry Month, and I wanted to share this piece with everyone. It is far from a cheerful springtime verse, but I encourage all of you to find creative inspiration in the dark places as well as the light:

He intercepts the blood flow with careful, gradual steps.
He seeps into the bloodstream,
Finds his way into the ribcage to wait and watch in safety.
He holds the heart between cold hands and demands the body speak for him.
"But don't worry," he says, climbing the chest wall on his rib ladder,
Up the larynx, the throat, and into the mouth.
From there he can make short, easy trips to the brain
       to light up a cigarette, maybe a fire, too, filling the entire cavity with smoke and fumes.
So often does he invade like a disease,
The count of blackened bodies stacking up—
       charred remnants under the terrified sun.

"Him," copyright 2019 Amelia Cotter (Second Place, Monsters Category by Adult Non-Resident, Highland Park Poetry’s 2018 Poetry Challenge and Chapbook)