Yellow Mama E zine
Issue #118
October 15th, 2026
The Orangedale Review of Books: Poem by Simon MacCulloch
Art by John C. Mannone © 2026
The Orangedale Review of Books
by Simon MacCulloch
Do you understand what is happening here?
A Tale of Two Cities.
They’re going to kill the man
The Third Pan Book of Horror Stories.
But they want to make him suffer first.
The Holy Bible.
You guys who like reading about tortures should try the Book of Kings.
The Daily Mail.
That was good, what they did to those guys.
TV21.
So they’ve got him tied to this big wheel that goes into this pool of boiling lead, right
Torture Through the Ages.
Great book!
Simon MacCulloch lives in London and contributes poetry to a variety of publications, such as Black Petals, Spectral Realms, Pulsebeat Poetry Journal, Apocalypse Confidential, and others.
Image: Photograph of the University of Tennessee Alumni Building with gothic architecture was filtered with ToolWiz Photos/fast filter/art express to create a mood for the halls of torture. Photograph and Photo-art credit: John C. Mannone
John C. Mannone is a scientist, poet, lyrical essayist, fiction writer, and poetry editor who creates derivative visual art and photo art for speculative poems in Abyss & Apex, Silver Blade (on hiatus), and ADR Poetry (defunct). His photography/art appears on the anthology cover of the 2026 Tennessee Voices, inside Chattanooga Writers’ Guild anthologies, and on select collections. He currently serves on the artists staff of Yellow Mama Literary Magazine. His literary work appears widely in Artemis, Critical Humanities, The New England Journal of Medicine, and others. He’s the Poet Laureate for the City of Oak Ridge, TN (2026-2028).