by Matt Schumacher

You’re eligible for citizenship in nightmare country
of somnambulists and nosferatus,
or left amnesiac on the street of a dark, abandoned city,
on the corner where a phantom carriage steals poets’ souls.
Leering sorcerers lure dopplegangers from mirrors
to ruin wild students. Sinister carousels whirl their evil carnival
in a jagged, oblique village. You’re only accompanied
by gloomy symphony which would pale a pallbearer
several shades toward pity. I’m the film that prophesies blitzkrieg,
that shows you all the hall of frights inside a madman’s mind.
I’ll usher you in slender as death to watch the threats society most fears.
German ladies screamed and fainted for weeks
at the Marmorhaus in Berlin when I awakened
and climbed from my crate at the premiere.
&
&

Matt Schumacher

Greying Ghost published Matt Schumacher’s sixth collection of poetry, A Missing Suspiria de Profundis, last summer. Managing editor of Phantom Drift, he lives in Portland.

Artist: Robert Isely