Elegy for a Vampire
Julia Gordon-Bramer

 

                                                   You’ll remember me
wrong: sullen, older, a liquid
gestation that never curdled into birth.
Full of forced, sharpened
smile and appetite.
A vampire, I was. I wanted
you to fill me, inject some life
into my blood. I used to call
you, feel your smooth
deep tones click inside
my sonar ear. Wind-tangled
hymns hummed in electric
wires helped high
by my hooked feet. I was
a leathery black bird
flying nowhere, just to hold
my place. I used to close
these weak eyes at night, and think
if I thought hard enough of you,
you’d feel back my breath, we’d touch
in some elsewhere. Erratic,
dizzy spirals of flight.
I used to write; fold
my words around my chest like wings,
the hanging sins I could not send.
I used to wait, upside-down in that damned
cave; caliginous harbinger of nothing
but guano. Oh, but we both know                 
my flying rodent had to go.
I sealed her away.
Suffocated the shrieks
of that mosquito-eater in the night.
Blood-sucker! Rabies-tipped!

                                                   If you could know me now.
A silver stake.
The death-thrill.
Lilies.