BURNING HOUSE PRESS

Claudio Gizzi’s Theme for Andy Warhol’s Blood for Dracula (1973)

by James Pate

Udo Kier: fever-eyes in a porcelain face.
Joe Dallesandro: the moody and muscular
Marxist landscaper.
In this movie mirrors reflect rooms
without us. Windows
shine with angular radiance.

You can smell the heat-dust even
from here: Appetites-of-August sunlight.
Paint blood. Spigots. Arcing spills.
The 1970s: each actor looks at you from there.
Vampirism one of many forms of fictionalized hunger.

Bloodied bread-sponge: gnostic gnashing, arsonic ardor.

Scenes out of the 1920s: a silent sedan rolls
out of Romania towards an Italian manor.
A coffin strapped
to its rooftop. Andy Warhol
in the background. In name only. In gaze only.
In his absent presence and present absence.

Starring frazzled curly hair.
Starring fallow-fecund gardens in a pastel orange nowhere.
Starring strawberry-smeared mouths.
Starring Pasolini style sans Pasolini.
Starring the unlocking stillness of a certain type
of danse macabre
in a certain type of summer.
Starring the descending
terraces of Claudio Gizzi’s theme.
Starring choked chords arising from absinthe-green
Kier flesh. In our hour
of solar headlessness.
This last August storm, noon-dim, noon-drunk.

Starring film-time
which is arranged from our time
which is arranged from no time at all.

James Pate has had work published in Black Warrior Review, Heavy Feather Review, Ligeia, Coffin Bell, Oculus Sinister: An Anthology of Ocular Horror and Occulum, among other places. His books include the poetry collections The Fassbinder Diaries (Civil Coping Mechanisms) and Mineral Planet (Schism Neuronics), and the essay collection Flowers Among the Carrion (Action Books Salvo Series).