POETRY BY JAMES ARTHUR ANDERSON

James Arthur Anderson is Professor Emeritus at Johnson and Wales University and now teaches part-time at Georgia Southern University. He has a Ph.D. from the University of Rhode Island, and a B.A. and M.A. from Rhode Island College.

His speculative poetry has appeared in Star*Line, Scifaikuest, Ilumen, Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine, and Spectral Realms. He has also published poetry in a number of literary journals, including Gulf Stream Magazine, The Bryant Literary Review, and Aries. His sonnet won first place in the rhymed Poetry category in the 76th Annual Writer’s Digest Writing Competition. He has also published several critical studies, including Methods and Meaning in the Novels of Stephen King: a Constant Reader’s Guide (McFarland); The Linguistics of Stephen King (McFarland); Excavating Stephen King: a Darwinist Hermeneutic Study of the Fiction(Lexington); and Out of the Shadows: A Structuralist Approach to Understanding the Fiction of H.P. Lovecraft (Wildside). His latest historic fantasy novel, The Scrolls of Ramose, was recently published by Nightmare Press. He lives in Garfield, Georgia with his wife Lynn, a very spoiled dog and an increasing number of barn cats.

STUDIES IN CONCRETE

It thinks I don’t see it there embedded in the concrete,
camouflaged like a grey mantis stuck to the washed-out wall.
It is patient, I’ll give it that. But it’s not fooling me.
I can see its compound eyes disguised as water stains,
its nose a hollow where the once-smooth surface flaked away,
its jaws, a cement bear trap of discolored, weathered streaks.

It thinks I don’t see it, but I do.
It’s right there, clear as day, for anyone to see,
just waiting to jump out
when the time is right.

ALIEN KISS

I love how you can take on
the shape of anyone or anything.
Last week you came to me
as my beloved dog
who has been gone for years now,
and last night you were a college fling.
I felt like I was a teenager again
when things got hot and heavy.
But tonight you will return to me
as my true love on the day when we met
and I will relive our very first kiss.
If you take some of my blood,
drain some of my life’s force, even,
it is just fine.
Trust me, it is well worth the price.

AS LONG AS WE BOTH SHALL LIVE

I weep for you, my love
even as I lift the coffin lid
to do the dreaded thing
that brings me to your tomb.
Though you wish to grant me immortality
it is a gift I must refuse,
for you would have me share
your eternal, spectral fate
and stalk the night in search
of blood and wretched souls.
So instead I give you this final kiss,
placed upon your cold, blue lips.
with all I hold dear
I wish it might not be so
as I drive this wooden stake
into your blackened heart
and shed one last tear.
True to my wedding vow,
until death did we part.

ROAD KILL

The last thing I expected to find
by the side of the road
was the body of the most beautiful angel
with broken wings,
crushed from the waist down
by a log truck, no doubt,
that had hit her during the night.
I closed her lifeless blue eyes
with my fingertips,
and carefully placed her remains
into one of the oversized bags
they had issued us, the volunteer clean-up crew.
I took her home
and buried what was left of her
in the back yard beside the beloved family dog
who had died last fall.
I placed a rock over the grave,
said a brief prayer for them both,
then trudged back to the house,
carrying my hat in my hand.