Channeling Poe

It’s fitting that I’d be a fan of Poe. After all, we both went to the University of Virginia. Thanks to my mother, who read “The Raven” to me when I was little. I was soon hooked on his stories, too. While in college, I couldn’t resist stopping by Poe’s old dorm room (or one very like it), preserved as a proud memorial of his brief time there. I doubt he was actually in Room 13.

I wrote this poem inspired by a lively new statue of Poe with a raven titled “Poe Returning to Boston.” Artist Steff Rocknak created the bronze sculpture to be (5’8”), Poe’s precise height.

Poe in Purgatory

Eternity is lasting way too long. I tire
of these modern humans, their lewd
profanity, their murder of grammar.

This must be Purgatory. I’ve already lived
through Hell. If it were Heaven, my dear
Virginia would be in my arms. Instead,

this blasted bird insists on being by my side every long minute of the day and night. We need no sleep or food, so I read to him.

About a century ago, Raven stopped repeating the one cursèd word I gave him after I agreed not to call him Damned Raven. My biographer

is the one who should be damned. I realize that I owe much of my growing literary stature to Raven, but made the mistake of saying so.

Now he puffs himself up, stays a step ahead of me, puts me in his shadow. Do these changes mean we’re moving closer to judgment?

Or maybe reincarnation? I’d like to be a writer again if I could but know
the secrets I know now.

Alarie Tennille

First published by The Ekphrastic Review

This next bizarre poem was based on a true story I found in the newspaper. I wrote it as a personna poem about the old woman, since the doctor, paramedics, daughter, police— everyone but her got to have their say.

Be careful out there! Stay away
from the Rue Morgue.

Waking in the Morgue

Ostrow Lubelski, Poland

Voices. Echoes. Stench of antiseptics. Not my room at home. I push, pull, find myself

inside a soft sac. Dear God, no. Don’t let me be back in the womb. I don’t want to start again.

I’m 91 years used to Janina. Am I still female? Still Polish? I thrash, try to use my own weak

contractions to get this over. I hear a zip, squint into the light, tell the man peering in I want a cup of tea.

First published in Ofi Press Magazine

Have a Howwwling Good Time!