Anna Cates

Vampire: A Found Poem

Psychics can see the color of time, it’s blue.
The past is a foreign country; they do things differently there.
Ships at a distance have every man’s wish on board.
Where now? Who now? When now?
In the beginning, sometimes I left messages in the street.
I am a sick man . . . I am a spiteful man.
In a sense, I am Jacob Horner.
He was born with a gift of laughter and a sense that the world was mad.

no lips
left to howl
yet dreams
of cedar and sage
a gentle twilight

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Notes:

Lines (first lines from each book) taken in order from:

Ronald Sukenick, Blown Away;

L. P. Hartley, The Go-Between; 

Zora Neale Hurston, Their Eyes Were Watching God; 

Samuel Beckett, The Unnamable;

David Markson, Wittgenstein’s Mistress; 

Fyodor Dostoyevsky,  Notes from Underground;

John Barth, The End of the Road,

 Raphael Sabatini, Scaramouche

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About the Author

Anna Cates lives in Ohio with her two cats, Freddie and Fifi, and teaches writing, literature, and graduate education online. Her most recent poetry collections include Electric Cat City: A Poesy (Red Moon Press, 2023), The Golem & the Nazi (Red Moon Press) and The Journey (Wipf & Stock). 

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