Susan Vaughan The 2River View, 5.3 (Spring 2001)

Dracula After My Birthday Dinner

After old friends had gifted me and tottered
homeward at dusk, I dozed on my sagging sofa,
TV grumbling, and dreamed of a shadowy den
with flickering pastel torches, strangely goopy.

And when he turned, I saw that he had lost
through poor dental hygiene at last his horrifical uppers
and yawned in his La-Z Boy, watching the news after dinner,
harrumphing, Mina, where's my goddamn glasses?

She must have burned and buried his monstrous cape,
for he wore a terrycloth bathrobe in robin's-egg blue
and brandished his goblet, cursing those bastards in Congress
and CableTime West as his picture sucked inward and died.

But then, of course, I woke up and laughed like a maniac
to think I had even dreamed that someone as hard-ass
as he—good Christ on a bicycle!—could have forgotten
the taste of young blood and settled for cheap red wine.

CoverPrevious PoemNext Poem

2River All is well.