Poetry month poetry: He Really Should Have Written

Today’s poem from first lines provided by Poet Laureate Gerald Hill yesterday to all members of the Saskatchewan Writers Guild. I’m really having a blast with these. Today’s was particularly fun.

All the other poems: I Tumble Through the Diamond Dust, Virtuality, This is the Way the World Ends, The Last Thing Your Lips Touched, Facing the Silence, The Telling, Saint Billy, I Remember His Eyes, His Body Knows, Emily Alison Atkinson Finds God, I Will Ride Off the Horizon, There’s Nothing Artificial About Love.

The first lines:

The man at the door with a gun is our son.

We think he’s after our money,

– Brenda Niskala, “Blunt Instrument” from How to Be a River

Karaoke never paid the rent

or did it? My night students ask

– Jeanette Lynes, “Abba Down Cold” from A Woman Alone on the Atikokan Highway

He Really Should Have Written

By Edward Willett

The man at the door with a gun is our son.

We think he’s after our money.

We think of him as a man and our son

though he hasn’t been a man for twenty years,

or written, called or emailed even once

since the night the vampires got to him

behind the Milky Way.

If he’d bought garlic ice cream, then

he might have fought them off.

But he’d bought Heavenly Hash, and

despite the name it proved of little use

against the batboys.

I say he hasn’t called or written once,

but I guess he did, right after he was bitten.

The note said, “Mom and Dad, I’m not your child

anymore. I’m now a child of the night.”

And that, indeed, was all he wrote.

Now, please don’t think we’re prejudiced

against vampires. There are several

in the classes that I teach, every

weekday night from September to June,

in the tower of the old Conservatory.

It’s just that after our son had been sucked

into that life, he had no time for us, and

we have to tell the truth: that hurts a little,

though not as much, I’d guess, as

long sharp fangs piercing his carotid artery

hurt him.

But vampires are not all created equal.

My students mostly like to spend their nights

just singing karaoke (they like

ABBA and Loretta Lynn the best),

downing pints of AB negative,

or for a rare treat, O.

All they really want to do, they say,

is sing all night, then sleep the day away,

inside a nice wood coffin if they’re lucky, or a

cardboard shipping box if they are not.

“Karaoke never paid the rent, or did it?”

my night students ask. I have to

gently break it to them that it didn’t, and

they’re going to have to find a job somehow:

not easy, with the prejudice

all vampires face. People think

they’re all these killer demons,

roaming through the streets like roaring lions

seeking whom they may devour—

and they’re mostly not.

Still, it’s not prejudiced to say

that some underemployed vampires

turn to crime. Which is why our son

is just outside our door, and has a gun,

and wants our money.

But he won’t get it. Even though

the classes that I teach can pay the rent

(quite unlike karaoke) there just

isn’t much left over, and

my husband hasn’t held a steady job

since he turned into a werewolf.

(You think it’s tough to get a job if

you’re a vampire? Try it when

three nights every month you wake up naked

in some stranger’s backyard,

drenched in blood and with their

dachshund’s collar stuck in your teeth.)

So though it pains us to do it,

we’ve put a bucket of holy water

above the door, and my husband

has a crossbow (he’s a

real good shot now that he’s a werewolf),

and I have a crucifix, and also

a machete just in case.

(The crossbow bolt to the heart should do the trick,

but beheading’s a viable option, too.)

It’s not the world I grew up in,

but we all do what we have to.

And anyway,

he really should have written.