Horror Movie

Andrea England

Like the one I watched last night
with Gary, under the ratty blue camping
blanket, thinking, yes! I want to die
like that, the victim of an eight year old
ballerina with teeth for a face, or like the
guy who’s in charge, by a merman and not
the same old inbred Satanist idiots living
in the backwoods of some mentionable state.
All I need is a bear trap on a chain to sling
at my other apocalypse-surviving friends
as I’m driving my three kids to a Mexican
restaurant in Fennville, Michigan, so I can
buy one of them a piñata for her birthday.

I remember the joy of Children of the Corn,
living in what used to be the soybean capital
of the world, now taken over by Round-Up
and genetically-engineered all of it, eating
microwave popcorn as Malachi shoved
the last living adult’s finger into a blender,
thinking how I would do anything for a god that
let me play hooky and tell my parents
to go to hell. Then there’s my father sitting
in his black pleather recliner who can’t
understand why I would want to watch such
things, him seeing his buddies’ arms and legs
dangling from trees all in the line of duty.

There are a lot of ways to die out there, and I don’t
want to go gentle into the goddamn night
even after what I’ve seen of catheter tubes,
seven point restraints, and road kill on wet
autumn nights; after a couple glasses of the house
whatever will get you drunk enough to let your
guard down, slip the truth, disrobe. One of my
three kids would just slow us down, like a pug
running from a cheetah on one of those PBS shows
that came before Family Disney on Sunday nights.
Next I’ll have to turn the piñata around and blindfold
the kids, spin them round, reassure them with arms.
No baby, no choosing how you get to the stars.

←

→