Cate Peebles
—
31 Notes for a Horror Movie
1. Fresh start in the country: a house full of amulets, handprints
2. Straw dolls, key chains, a scent when the priest drops by
3. The drawer filled to spilling with tiny bottles of perfume and tints
4. My Latin is dusty
5. A nation of idling cars: get in, we’re leaving town
6. Can’t tell you how to sing the songs I used to know
7. Packing plenty of canned meat to hide out the apocalypse & baby too
8. City life is her mind and she leaves it behind
9. Maybe an antique brooch and raw beef would be nice
10. Do your research: something happened here before you were born
11. A mirror is propped up to catch window moods
12. Practice your scream in desert locations; yellow pants, pink sky
13. Child on bicycle rides by twice, same direction, whistles
14. The ice cream truck tune bleeds into Yankee Doodle
15. Child zombies on ice at the mall
16. American sun, hot dogs, red gullets
17. A cracked spool of microfilm at the library
18. Thinking is no longer an option for me
19. Gold eyes glow gold eyes glow gold
20. Holy names
21. Powers that be
22. Tentacle embrace all in your head
23. Tarantula spooning crocheted brazier—a fly descends
24. Where’s the dog, Yolanda?
25. An explosion sometime in the past, its aftermath
26. Don’t believe in the future, do you?
27. She walks down basement stairs, feels his mouth
28. But nothing, your heart sweats, everything right where it was
29. Whose hand in the water lifts red hair
30. Don’t argue against lust, Daphne, but lock the door
31. The End
Cate Peebles is the author of the collection Thicket (Lost Roads Press, 2018) and several chapbooks, including The Woodlands (Sixth Finch Books, 2016) and James (dancing girl press, 2014). Recent work can be found in The American Poetry Review, Typo, Poetry Northwest and elsewhere. She is a museum archivist at the Yale Center for British Art and lives in New Haven, CT.
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