Dracula

by Kenneth Radu

Last night, sleek with surfeit,
I read a disquisition
about sex and death.

The scholar, whose ancestors
burned witches and locked
their loins against

stray desires, footnotes
my perversions, annotates
the unconscious drives,

writes elegantly about
the bite in the neck
and transfiguration.

The fun’s in the piercing,
it seems, alluding to Sebastian
of the ambiguous arrows,

or the way men and women
spread their legs when
the moon announces dinner.

But before, between courses,
intercourse is the last desire
on my mind when I whet my teeth.

Poisoned by denial, only Calvinists
concoct theories of kinky sex
out of dead bodies and folklore.

My purpose is the poetry
of resurrection, the power
of living longer than God.