Vampire Western
Gay Brewer
You notice yourself slinking past mirrors
like a bloodsucker in a lurid children's tale.
If only that were so, that you gave
no reflection. Only sometimes, wrestling a key
into a door or passing a closed window
in the moonlight, you see the sad-eyed monster
of presence who skulks beside you.
Jowls, chin, nose, translucent but unmistakable.
You can't recall when he stopped smiling,
when teeth began dulling behind
a routine of petulance. And the eyes he used
to brag about, that glowed like the devil's own
child. A dangerous face, he fancied,
a face at least destined for a post office wall.
But his bluff's called, a finger twitches
on a six-gun. No last bottle of redemption.
No sweet white neck, powdered and virginal.
This is not the figure you want
preserved in a sideshow as the century turns over.
But it's your face, so learn to die with it.
Where is the countenance that could burn a village?
Or melt the daughter while her daddy weeps?
Think about the Man Inside, held merely,
you reckon, in stupid mortal clay. And anyway
as the box of native soil is discovered at sunrise
and the last good woman in town marries your brother,
you're above it all, you're really laughing.
