Lament for Dracula

The mist thought itself a man, the man thought himself

down to the thin; woke damp, woke

dim, symmetric and dumbstrung across the tobacco rows
of Ivor, Virginia. Pink flowers to trouble the hair; pink flowers
to fret empty the lungs. What has begun began

with a drunk firing a frog gig, navigating swamplands
by muzzleflash. She named the shots
stars. Next, came you,

you to carve ghosts into bus-stop benches.
You, to cry into the barrel of your guns.

We can live forever among our wrong loves

if we can grieve, if we believe we are capable

of any real grief (no, we are not). Trace a name
beneath the black plate of the moon:

your secret constellations,
try to share them with anyone and you'll never aim at the right spot.
So plot their ecliptics for yourself. Track their unluster. The man

thought itself a mist and so thought it could know itself

by what it filled, by what encircled it.

And so it disappeared. If you're alive, it's because the heart
is a smaller target than you'd think.

- Jamison Crabtree (from apt)

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