POETRYNosferatuCharles Joseph
Image © Film Arts Guild
When I was a kid
my mother would stand
in the dark beside my bed
while I slept
like a vampire
in a night gown
with long blond hair
and porcelain skin
and each time I woke up
she'd scare the piss out of me
so I'd pull the covers up
over my head and scream
(because
it seemed like
she was about to
consume me)
but not one drop of blood
was ever spilled, because
she was only there
to protect it.
Charles Joseph lives and writes in Montclair, NJ. He is the author of four poetry chapbooks that people seem to really like, and No Outlet (a novel) that he’s currently shopping to agents. His new chapbook Fireball (12 quasi-epic poems of cheerful doom and gloom) is available at wwww.indigentpress.com. One day Charles hopes to own a farm and raise chickens.
More Poetry
male-pattern badness did you see me me take a picture of me walk on the beach to take
picture walking on the beach could reach 100 likes like male-pattern badness bring me the password
her church was music
and her gods dead rock stars
who she joined on an eternal tour
around the furthest reaches
of space and time,
I lied to my fourth therapist,
telling her all of my bogus
achievements while she jotted
them down on a pad in her lap,
hoping that she couldn't smell
the Schnapps on my breath
4x4ever everything I expected 2.5 bedroom gun rack smokestack tread for dread of poor handling known known unknowable star-spangled suspension of disbelief
I have gone astray,
thinking,
rambling
in an esoteric phrase,
lying to the government
about a loaded gun
between my legs.
The gift of childhood is imagination. In Sarah Frances Moran's poem, "Still Alive and Well" love and forgiveness are found in a friendship that withstand the challenges of life.
"Inside my body rests this adventurer.
I know it was birthed by you. The way fresh air
fills your lungs and how a campfire and a cold beer
can be like heaven.
Riding bikes down bayou banks
and tiptoe walking across railroad bridges.
We are wanderers. Romantic gypsies just a little
misunderstood."
