A Chat With A Vampire Poem by robert dickerson

'Mirrors, garlic, wolfsbane. Twaddle. Pure Hollywood. Beneath contempt', he said, looking at me hard. It had caused him much pain. And the Cross? Nothing to it. Why, he himself was a believer. And his dread familiers-bats, the wolves-what were they now but endangered species, fleeing the guns of men, pegged to a shrinking terrain. Times had changed. Nobody knew it better. True, he eschewed human food-'the hacked and heated sinews of a dead ungulate-no thank you', he frowned. 'Well, now and then, for the sake of some love-sick countess, or to put some clever young medic off the trail, beneath whose baffled gaze the blithe young beauty chafed and grew pale, her pupils contracted to evil pinpoints, hard, flat and burning with new insight, night after night-he would. But, otherwise? Too bloating. Fattening, besides. The only thing he couldn't do was to countenance the sunrise or entertain on face and form its sterilizing ray. 'I can never see the sun', he groaned. 'Sad, in itself, but do-able, I joked, 'considering the alternatives'. 'But not the inconvenience you might think', he continued, brightening: cancer,