So while a bunch of the people around me are thinking about death and resurrection, and a bunch of the other people around me are thinking snide but funny thoughts about the undead, I thought I’d share this fun poem with you by Mike Alexander, because being raised Catholic and ending up Gothic means that I find this poem charming. It first appeared in the Magazine of Speculative Poetry.

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What’s At Stake

First, there’s the boring wait on night to fall,
or light to fail — & light is more resilient
than one would think. Each dawn is like withdrawal.

Whoever said the dead move fast was brilliant;
that being said, it isn’t very often
they try to bring their habits up to speed
with what’s been going on outside the coffin.

Few night schools teach what nosferatu need.
Blood is the life, but still it tastes like death,
a greed that’s savored best in isolation,
a grief that clings like garlic to the breath.
Each kill is tantamount to escalation.

The jugulars we drain, night after night,
can never cleanse that first inhuman bite.

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Mike Alexander ran the Mausoleum weekly poetry open mic for six of its ten year run. His book Retrograde came out in 2013, & his most recent chapbook was We Internet in Different Voices.