Vampires
Sonia Greenfield
From the spooky fog of youth, the comely
vampires emerged like they were taking shape
from the mist, and I was besotted. I knew it
was all about surrender—giving over
the ensanguined animal of my body
to be sucked dry, yet somehow live again
even paler, even more tragic. How I used
to fit the false canines over my lesser
specimens and lurk between neighborhood
trees like a girl trying to become lore. Still,
I thought I might have grown past it, left them
drawing blood from the necks of dock rats
or taking women down in the gloom of goth
clubs. Funny then to assess the flat teeth
of my family—to have figured them harmless.
Yet every day they bury their mouths into
me and pull until they are flush with health
while I drain to husk, paperwhite in my anemia.
In the supermarket, we recognize each other
and exchange wan smiles, mothers with skin
as thin and transparent as the bags for our apples.
Nevertheless, each night I slip into the kind
of sleep known by the half-dead so my marrow
can re-ruddy my glow, and each morning, I turn
my head aside, sip coffee, and supplicate.
My artery thrumming its song to my loves,
who know me only as a giver anyway.
Sonia Greenfield (she/they) is the author of two recent collections of poetry, All Possible Histories (Riot in Your Throat, December 2022) and Helen of Troy is High AF (Harbor Editions, January 2023). She is the author of Letdown (White Pine Press, 2020), American Parable (Autumn House, 2018) and Boy with a Halo at the Farmer's Market (Codhill Press, 2015). Her work has appeared in the 2018 and 2010 Best American Poetry, Southern Review, Willow Springs and elsewhere. She lives with her family in Minneapolis where she teaches at Normandale College, edits the Rise Up Review, and advocates for neurodiversity and the decentering of the cis/het white hegemony. More at soniagreenfield.com.