The Shambling Darkness Project

Emily Dickinson Comes Back From the Dead to Eat the Brains of Billy Collins

He cowers in the room at the top of the stairs

to the left of the bathroom, the only one

left with a lock.

He can hear her in the hall, her & the heroines

also murdered by E.A. Poe. Those

ladies suited to the subject of poetry.

Such lines are the easily masticated leftovers

of the Marquis of poetry. Billy, she mumbles

her voice a shuffle on the carpet –

I know you’re in there, Billy, I can smell

your – He bought the runner because its paisleys

marched in tune with a thought he had

while looking down from his window

when the leaves parted in an afternoon breeze

and he could see how much better he was

than everybody else. Also, the paisleys look

like brains, sweet, sweet brains. She’s at the lock

now. Billy hears a fly because she’s dead

& walking, her two-step century shoes.

Billy is about to be revised into an abstract.

Before he goes, though, let me say

that inside that room, the lights off & the end,

Billy, the comfort of space is its closing. There,

the abstract like an opening mouth, the room

closing in.