Austin Allen James

My New Girlfriend is a Vampire

All my kitchen appliances were white

before I met you. You, with your spiced

avocado toast, flush with the content

of buried lightning.  Coffee is served—

that Gothic Evangelical sort with a dark

roasted flavor.  Let’s paint the cabinets

in a 1970s sunrise glow— a vampire’s

curse holds no sway at dawn. Still,

I add glitter to my children’s pockets

so that they might float away at night. 

She is stubborn at daybreak as she crawls

in, covered with devotion and engravings

that spin her skin rouge.  At dusk, she fans

toward the gulf and disappears with the night.

Skin

I walked from home through my children’s

youth, to Spain and Magazine Street,

through every other southern state

in a string of red dots— Set my skin

free to roam the remnants of submission:

the alchemy of childhood.  I flow with gravity,

the Mediterranean, and a Mexican ship sweet

with vanilla malt; green eyes scan the shore

and skim the unconsidered parchment in a bedroom.

We are blinded by the pitched light

among cattails in the bog of boyhood. 

Love is captured in a child and does not cease.

I will follow you in time, as skin is left to

callus

and the memory of a father’s heart

remains present in each pearl of sweat.

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Austin Allen James is a Visiting Professor at Texas Southern University in Houston, TX. He has taught at TSU since the Fall of 2012. In 2016, Austin and colleagues formed a committee to create a “Professional Writing” concentration, which includes five creative writing classes. Austin is also a visual artist, sculptor, and furniture designer.