LESBIAN VAMPIRE ACADEMY
It is not, one might suspect, a place for sisters
To swallow a garlic tablet, or inspect a crucifix;
Lipstick applied strictly without mirrors;
The librarian expects Swinburne’s books
Returned to the minute or penalties accrue;
Turned at eighteen from mortal to undivine,
They prefer their correction on the rack
Wriggling as they divest them of mortal wine –
The inside gag they have to label our blood –
For make no mistakes, these fanged co-eds
With their skirts and blouses kill for sport
Like gods did once; they’re the new thing,
Digitally connected to the boys they lure
To suspend upside down, pleading anaemia
Or malaria or worse – girls long in tooth,
Their claws decreased for Instagram, their busts
Instead pronounced – most from Slavonic
Lands, or so they sound – they smirk, and grind
Their words like chewing bones, torture
Syntax because they can; whip their torsos
Into archaic shape, and shine at night
As brightly as any chemical tan applied;
I have begged for these daughters of Satan
To accept me onto their course; their syllabi
Defeats most sibyls, their demonic kissing
Transformative as any degree in engineering
Or genetics. I want to learn to die in the arms
Of one of these creatures of the evening glow –
Though they prefer artifice and gaming
Among their own lithe immortal jejune kind;
They toss and throw men around like dice,
Break off their parts like icicles in red snow;
And genuinely disdain what jets from lust
Except it has glucose and drips roseate,
Sublimely, from a spliced open vein or more;
Don’t call them tarts or harlots or whores,
Just because you cannot control their feeding
Or what drives them to desire a frenzied milk
That runs in rivulets down the giving dead.
I ask for them to have mercy on my Christian
Birth and imbue me with acrobatic skills
So I can fly-crawl and web-scuttle as they do;
I have been lead here by graphic insights
And a craving to live when rivals pass away;
But tonight is Halloween so they are gay
And dancing sickly-pale, half-vivid, quiet
To hear the ringing of girls from the academy
Trick or treating in the laneway; I am dropped
Like a bad option and told to return next year.
I pass giggling donors dressed as ghosts,
Envision soaked engaging toasts ahead;
Praying to the grape-ripe moon for dark power.
30 October 2015
copyright Todd Swift
Turned at eighteen from mortal to undivine,
They prefer their correction on the rack
Wriggling as they divest them of mortal wine –
The inside gag they have to label our blood –
For make no mistakes, these fanged co-eds
With their skirts and blouses kill for sport
Like gods did once; they’re the new thing,
Digitally connected to the boys they lure
To suspend upside down, pleading anaemia
Or malaria or worse – girls long in tooth,
Their claws decreased for Instagram, their busts
Instead pronounced – most from Slavonic
Lands, or so they sound – they smirk, and grind
Their words like chewing bones, torture
Syntax because they can; whip their torsos
Into archaic shape, and shine at night
As brightly as any chemical tan applied;
I have begged for these daughters of Satan
To accept me onto their course; their syllabi
Defeats most sibyls, their demonic kissing
Transformative as any degree in engineering
Or genetics. I want to learn to die in the arms
Of one of these creatures of the evening glow –
Though they prefer artifice and gaming
Among their own lithe immortal jejune kind;
They toss and throw men around like dice,
Break off their parts like icicles in red snow;
And genuinely disdain what jets from lust
Except it has glucose and drips roseate,
Sublimely, from a spliced open vein or more;
Don’t call them tarts or harlots or whores,
Just because you cannot control their feeding
Or what drives them to desire a frenzied milk
That runs in rivulets down the giving dead.
I ask for them to have mercy on my Christian
Birth and imbue me with acrobatic skills
So I can fly-crawl and web-scuttle as they do;
I have been lead here by graphic insights
And a craving to live when rivals pass away;
But tonight is Halloween so they are gay
And dancing sickly-pale, half-vivid, quiet
To hear the ringing of girls from the academy
Trick or treating in the laneway; I am dropped
Like a bad option and told to return next year.
I pass giggling donors dressed as ghosts,
Envision soaked engaging toasts ahead;
Praying to the grape-ripe moon for dark power.
30 October 2015
copyright Todd Swift
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