Here; Alone and Wanting
you want to want anything other than what you have
i.
everyone in town has secrets
his are the only you want to know
want to hold them in your hands
the way he holds the baby bird
wings broken
it’s first flight unsuccessful
you watch carefully from a safe distance
as he brings the creature to his mouth
he is tender
just as he is when he puts his hand on your arm
sitting together on your front porch
he implies often that he will have to leave soon
and you wish he had wings you could break
make him end his life here
the way you will
ii.
you swim in the cold lake at night
and he can stay underwater longer than you
you’re tempted to hold him down
you want to see his slender body bloated
pictures of his corpse in terrible quality on your small television
for you to mull over as you eat your breakfast
you want to want anything other than what you have
his body beside yours in the bed later on
as you pretend to be asleep
trying to find a flaw in his form
as he pretends to sleep too
pretends to not notice you
iii.
he cooks you breakfast one morning
eggs are already on the table when
you wake up alone in your bed
secretly wishing—
seeing the other side of the bed empty—
that he had finally gone for good
he has only made one plate
he watches you eat—
that angers you
he does not take even a bite—
that angers you
the eggs are delicious—
that angers you
you do not tell him of your anger
you thank him for the food
and on your drive to work
as you turn it over and over in your mind
your anger softens
you fear that softness
but when you return home
and he has already made dinner
you succumb to the softness
and enjoy
About the Creator
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From black and white vampire movies of the 1930s to the slasher boom of the 70s and 80s to even the polished, well-respected movies today, horror has always thrived as a subversive, chaotic genre. This aspect shines brightest in the B-movies of the 1980s, made with big ambitions and shoestring budgets. Stuart Gordon’s Re-Animator (1985) is one of these films, a modern adaptation of H.P. Lovecraft’s series, “Herbert West - Reanimator.” The film tells the story of an ambitious experiment gone wrong, then attempted again, and again, and again, going wrong each time. Herbert West moves to New England to study medicine at Miskatonic University after leaving the University of Zurich, where he studied previously, after something terrible happened to the man he worked with. West is not just a dedicated medical student, however; he mainly focuses on a strange personal project: a serum he calls “Re-Agent” which brings the dead back to life. Needing a space for this work, he moves in with fellow medical student Dan Cain, who needs help with rent because his fiancé, Meg Halsey, will not move in with him yet. Though Herbert does not set out to find an assistant, he unexpectedly finds one in Dan, who he convinces of the importance of his work, and they begin to do experiments together. The film devolves into chaos, with reanimated corpses consistently becoming violent and every side character quickly becoming wrapped up in the collateral of Herbert’s work. This chaos centers entirely on Herbert: a small, dark, gaunt figure with no concern for social niceties or much human emotion. Herbert disrupts all sense of normalcy any character may have had in their education, job, relationships, and existence. He destroys families, relationships, and lives with a plunge of a syringe and shows no care or concern about any of it. Every time he subverts order and creates chaos, his queerness shows itself. I also assert that Herbert, and specifically his queerness, must be evaluated through a horror-specific lens, as the genre must be viewed from a perspective that differs from how we view other genres.
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