Dana Kinsey

Love at First Bite

Someone told me we're all low-key
vampires – we sense each other's kind.

Hide those gracious fangs, shimmery skins, superb unnatural minds. Bards revise seduction skills, sonnet them through time. Hey, Dracula, you spectaculah. Nosferatu, may I woo you? Holy H2O, your ebony roses steal the show. If you unleash your inner Marquis, you can count me in. I’m begging you; let’s interview. I’m not Buffy, don’t bluff me. I’m super into you. But be forewarned, cuz this is true: I sleep in a coffin, too. Dark allusions ricochet from caves enclaved within. Upside down, our din explores some more terminal sin. We slink down starlit alleys, hit open mics on whims. Your charms charm chill winds like Poe’s flow makes darkness glow in every soul I’ll ever know. Similarly, your pen eyes me hungrily, writes me into corners. I’m not Baby; don’t you mourn her. I’m a woman like Sojourner. Behold how Swift I travel, Gulliver with sleeker wings. Let’s zip to Transylvania on a red-eye rendezvous. I feel the wooden stake in you. I’ll excavate that, too. Then nix that crucifix and help me mince this garlic. I rarely fall for a mortal dude; check my vampy attitude. You’re a sensory delight; so much hotter when it’s night. Sunlight is so yesterday. Midnight’s when chic monsters display their chicanery. We’ll trample all the wolfsbane in our crepe paper garden. Shatter all the glass, since we have no reflection. We look damn good in black and red; that’s our predilection. We’ll stock up on the dental floss, my crazy cool tuxedo-boss. Let me design with you, Sim City your similes. I’ll just leave a little trace of me in all the blood you taste, ya see. Give you my best iron-y. You suck it up so masterfully. This collab’s catastrophe, cuz we smell immortality. Can Vampire Diaries switch lines under capes? Fear’s not a factor – it’s the whole equation. Your persuasion makes me shiver; silver bullets down my spine. Your danger’s stranger, but I’ll still talk to you. Time is of the essence; your watch watches me too. For a billion years, we’ve been undead; poems lost their lives in your head. Dracula turned Mina red, but our word-thirst just won’t be fed. Type A-Positive cocktails, transfusion mocktails. We savor Count Chocula, when not at the jugulah. Those marshmallow ghosts make formidable hosts. Let’s blood-bank poetic sustenance; I kinda dig your countenance.

It’s really only common sense: we slurp up stars like bats.

Author Reading

About the Author

Dana Kinsey, Lancaster City Poet Laureate, is published in Fledgling Rag, The Champagne Room, SWWIM, SoFloPoJo, Anti-Heroin Chic, Prose Online, Lily Poetry Review, Red Ogre Review, Passengers, Drunk Monkeys, and more. Her poem Paying My Respects was in Oprelle’s Poetry Masters Anthology. Dana’s play, WaterRise, was produced at the Gene Frankel Theatre. Her chapbook, Mixtape Venus, was published by I. Giraffe Press. Find her online at WordsByDK.com.