Monday Poems: "Scary Movies" -- by Kim Addonizio

Today the cloud shapes are terrifying,   

and I keep expecting some enormous   

black-and-white B-movie Cyclops   

to appear at the edge of the horizon,

to come striding over the ocean   

and drag me from my kitchen   

to the deep cave that flickered   

into my young brain one Saturday

at the Baronet Theater where I sat helpless   

between my older brothers, pumped up   

on candy and horror—that cave,

the litter of human bones

gnawed on and flung toward the entrance,   

I can smell their stench as clearly

as the bacon fat from breakfast. This   

is how it feels to lose it—

not sanity, I mean, but whatever it is   

that helps you get up in the morning

and actually leave the house

on those days when it seems like death

in his brown uniform

is cruising his panel truck

of packages through your neighborhood.   

I think of a friend’s voice

on her answering machine—

Hi, I’m not here—

the morning of her funeral,   

the calls filling up the tape

and the mail still arriving,

and I feel as afraid as I was

after all those vampire movies   

when I’d come home and lie awake

all night, rigid in my bed,

unable to get up

even to pee because the undead   

were waiting underneath it;

if I so much as stuck a bare

foot out there in the unprotected air   

they’d grab me by the ankle and pull me   

under. And my parents said there was

nothing there, when I was older   

I would know better, and now   

they’re dead, and I’m older,   

and I know better.

*     *     *     *     *

Poet and novelist Kim Addonizio lives and works in Oakland, CA. She has been awarded two NEA fellowships as well as a Pushcart Prize for poetry and essay. 

"Scary Movies" can be found in her 2004 collection What is This Thing Called Love. Her most recent poetry collection is Lucifer at the Starlite (2009).