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Your Country Club in Hell

by James Robert Rudolph

A clot of old vampires all
bony-kneed and humpy-backed
their skin sallowing to pale slowly
clusters on the veranda and then
their lips veiny the blue of cyanosis they
begin clacking like the chittering
of murderous cats watching sparrows
feed through a porch screen
for you have arrived

They may talk of Satie and Proust and
last summer at Spoleto but they
are as parasitic as sea lampreys so
don’t let them close or you’ll leave
with a canker red as a Valentine heart
skirt their polished spats their silver locks
and tongues uncoiled turn from their oily
seductions keen and swinish leave them
for the night crows and the addicts let them
weaken so they blister under the moon

Take to the society of your chums
flush and full-bodied and lie only
with the pulsing


Copyright © 2019 by James Robert Rudolph

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