Kristina England

SLENDERMAN

Convinced he was real,
not some horror site character,
two 12-year-old Wisconsin girls
wanted to kill to please him.
They invited a friend to sleep over,
then took her to the woods for a "game."
One held her down, the other stabbed her—
once, twice, nineteen times.
They left her to bleed out in the grass,
strolling home as if no one but he
would know what they'd done.


Kristina reads "Slenderman":



Subscribe to Channel Five-Two for first view of new videos.


Kristina confesses: "'Slenderman' was inspired by a news article I read on CNN as part of a news-based chapbook I'm working on. The hard part of writing poems based on current news is finding something positive to write about. This was another story that left me shaking my head."


KRISTINA ENGLAND resides in Worcester, Massachusetts. Her writing is published or forthcoming in Borderlands: Texas Poetry Review, Gargoyle, New Verse News, and other magazines.