Michael A. Arnzen

MIDNIGHT PREPARATION

there is a warden
once a guard
who buttons up his special shirt—
the white one with a cutaway collar—
and whips together his Windsor
and then

slowly
he
tightens
the
necktie

mugging in the mosaic
made of shattered shaving mirrors
he's collected from death row


Mike reads "Midnight Preparation":



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Arnzen confesses: Sometimes ideas come from the strangest of places. I was watching a cop show on TV—probably one of the bazillion re-runs of an old Law & Order episode—where there was this momentary shot of a prisoner eyeballing a lawyer down the line through one of those miniature mirrors they stick out between the bars to gaze down the row. I researched it a little and found myself wondering what happens to these makeshift periscopes once the prisoners end their sentence. I imagined they might be hoarded by some nefarious guard with a secret fetish. Thus 'Midnight Preparation' was born.

MICHAEL A. ARNZEN (http://gorelets.com) has recently published a new sequel to Dracula ("Murrmann: A Tale of Van Helsing") and a new audiobook of his Bram Stoker Award-winning horror poetry collection Freakcidents (available at audible.com). You can also stream or download a "Digital Expanded Edition" of his flash fiction album, Audiovile, and a recording of his live poetry slam with Stephanie Wytovich called "Poedown" at http://arnzen.bandcamp.com. Arnzen holds four Bram Stoker Awards for his dark fiction and poetry. He teaches full-time in the MFA in Writing Popular Fiction program at Seton Hill University, near Pittsburgh, PA.