Wednesday, September 26, 2012

An Exeter Vampire, 1799



She comes back, in the rain, at midnight.
Her pale hand, not a branch, taps the glass.
Her thin voice, poor Sarah Tillinghast
whines and whimpers, chimes and summons you
to walk in lightning and will’o wisp
to the hallowed sward of the burial ground,
to press your cheek against her limestone,
to run your fingers on family name,
to let the rain inundate your hair,
wet your nightclothes to clammy chill,
set your teeth chattering, your breath
a tiny fog before you in the larger mist.

You did not see her go before you,
yet you knew she was coming here.
Soon her dead hand will tap your shoulder.
Averting your eyes, you bare your throat
for her needful feeding, your heat, your
heart’s blood erupting in her gullet.
You will smell her decay, feel the worms
as her moldy shroud rubs against you.
Still you will nurse the undead sister,
until her sharp incisors release you
into a sobbing heap of tangled hair,
your heart near stopped, your lungs exploding,
wracked with a chill that crackles the bones.

The rain will wash away the bloodstains.
You will hide your no more virginal
throat like a smiling lover’s secret.
Two brothers have already perished —
the night chill, anemia, swift fall
to red and galloping consumption.
Death took them a week apart, a month
beyond Sarah’s first night-time calling.

Honor Tillinghast, the stoic mother,
sits in the log house by the ebbing fire,
heating weak broth and johnny cakes.
One by one she has sewn up your shrouds—
now she assembles yet another.
She knows there is no peace on this earth,
nor any rest in the turning grave.


The storm ends, and birds predict the sun.
Upstairs, in garret and gable dark,
the children stir, weak and tubercular,
coughing and fainting and praying for breath.
The ones that suck by night are stronger
than those they feed on, here where dead things
sing their own epitaphs in moon-dance,
and come back, in the rain, at midnight.
_____
Exeter, Rhode Island’s “vampire” case of 1799 ended with the exhumation and destruction of the corpse of Sarah Tillinghast after four siblings followed her in death by consumption. They burned Sarah’s heart and reburied all the bodies. 

Wednesday, September 5, 2012

Milkweed Seeds


The air is full of milkweed seeds—
they fly, they light, they fly again—
they cling to leaf, to cat-tail,
dog fur and hedgehog quill.

They burst out of pods like wizened hags,
white hair pluming on witch winds.
Do not be fooled by their innocent pallor:
the sour milk sac that ejected them
is made of gossip, spite and discord.
Pluck this weed once, two take its place,
roots deep in the core of malice.

Cousin to carrion flower and pitcher plants
they fall on sleepers who toss in misery,
engendering boils and bleeding sores.
These are no playful sprites of summer—
they go to make more of their kind—
and if one rides through an open window
it can get with child an unsuspecting virgin,
who, dying, gives birth to a murderer.

Just give them a wind
     that’s upward and outward
and they’re off to the mountains
to worship the goat-head eminence,
pale lord of the unscalable crag,

Evil as white as blasted bone,
his corn-silk hair in dreadlocks,
his fangs a black obsidian
     sharp as scalpels,
his mockery complete
as every dust mote sings his praises.

Do not trust white, winged and ascending to heaven!
Beware, amid the bursting flowers, the sinister pod!