Three Poems by Tony Trigilio
Episode 737: January 1, 2020
from Book 4, The Complete Dark Shadows (of My Childhood)
It’s New Year’s Day 2020 and I’m trapped in a Dark Shadows 1897 time-travel fantasy with frock coats and evening gowns that look like awkward prom dresses while Laura, who was burned at the stake in Alexandria, Egypt, in 1896 but brought back to life the following year—just as her enchanted children were shipped off to a New England punishment school—dies yet again, this time by romantic candlelight on a luxurious rose and lemon, floral patterned velour bedspread, an uncomfortably erotic death scene in her boudoir with Quentin, who kisses her and remarks on the coldness of her lips as she takes her final breaths. Or so it seems, since this is necromaniacal Collinsport, after all, where the dead never perish, they just change into different period costumes (the afterlife is a wardrobe). Later, summoning her last ounce of occult energy before the credits roll, Laura gazes boozily into the crackling bedroom fireplace and prays to Amen-Ra at an exotic fever pitch until, eventually, the Egyptian deity manifests as Collins family servant Dirk Wilkins, who brings Laura back to life, Egypt’s King of the Gods suddenly taking great interest in the decadent melodrama of a wealthy, nineteenth-century family living in Nowheresville, Maine.
Episode 781: April 6, 2021
from Book 4, The Complete Dark Shadows (of My Childhood)
There is danger for me everywhere now
Carl knows what you are—he saw you yesterday in your coffin
I must find another coffin to rest in
I challenge you, Barnabas—stay in this room with me till sunrise
Carl knows what you are—he saw you yesterday in your coffin
Carl is dead—because he discovered my secret
I challenge you, Barnabas—stay in this room with me till sunrise
What has the dawn to do with me
Carl is dead—because he discovered my secret
You will have to return to your coffin before morning
What has the dawn to do with me
The sight of the cross disturbs you—doesn’t it, Mr. Collins
You will have to return to your coffin before morning
It won’t be easy to find out where I keep the coffin
The sight of the cross disturbs you—doesn’t it, Mr. Collins
There is no coffin in my cellar
It won’t be easy to find out where I keep the coffin
Are you getting nervous, Mr. Collins
There is no coffin in my cellar
Show us where you keep your coffin
Are you getting nervous, Mr. Collins
I didn’t tell you—I moved my coffin
Show us where you keep your coffin
Very well—I shall return at dawn
I didn’t tell you—I moved my coffin
We’ve made considerable progress finding the coffin
Very well—I shall return at dawn
Dead by day, alive by night—without a coffin, you cannot exist
We’ve made considerable progress finding the coffin
I must find another coffin to rest in
Dead by day, alive by night—without a coffin, you cannot exist
There is danger for me everywhere now
Bent at the waist, straining against
her corseted, floor-length beige
gown with cornstalk-yellow lace
collar, Charity covers her face
and shrieks as Quentin’s portrait
turns into a werewolf’s, and Charles
Delaware Tate rushes to console her,
moving nimbly in his loose-fitting,
cobalt-blue painter’s smock (topped
with a black cravat) to pour her
a glass of sherry, calming Charity
just enough for her to venture forth
into the haunted Styrofoam forest
outside Collinwood, blonde shoulders
covered with a purple knit shawl,
at which point Dan Curtis, the show’s
creator, directing his 20th (and next-to-
last) episode, cuts to a pair of oxblood
candles in close-up—just one burning
when the scene opens, yet both aflame
by the end, thanks to a resourceful
stagehand with a pack of matches—
on a table behind the black iron
bars of the Old House dungeon where
Barnabas locked up Little Jamison,
the camera pulling back for a shot
of the boy calling for help, his cries
summoning Magda, who charges into
the scene, her jet-black wig askew,
twilight-blue peasant skirt swishing,
face smeared with thick, amber-tan
greasepaint, an oily sheen evoking
once more the network’s fetish for
daytime soap blackface—its ongoing
struggle to transform Grayson Hall
into a convincing 19th-century Romani
fortune teller with a Viennese psycho-
analyst accent living in rural Maine—
Magda’s black velour blouse wreathed
in so many costume necklaces her body
jangles when she dashes to Jamison’s
cell door, where, later in the scene,
the enchanted little boy, still dutifully
wearing Count Petofi’s black leather
gloves, dupes Magda into believing
he’s no longer possessed by the Count,
whose supernatural butler Aristede
watches Tate return to tonight’s episode
in a black fedora (with silver-black hat-
band) tilted to the side, Whitman-like,
and a nightingale-green Inverness cape,
complaining in his signature croupy
whine that the Count bewitched his
painting career (I have to confess,
I wasn’t listening, distracted by the scaly
gold frippery gilding Aristede’s vest
and the gigantic, disc-shaped matching
gold pendant on a silver pearl chain that
hangs down to his stomach and whose
goofy excess calls to mind the enormous
black-and-white clock that Public Enemy
co-founder Flavor Fav used to wear
around his neck and that, like Aristede’s
pendant, dangled all the way to his belly,
too), the Aegean-green, ersatz stone walls
of Aristede’s super-villain hideout aglow
with a touch of mausoleum-gray beneath
the harsh soundstage Klieg lights as Tate
paces the cavern grumbling over Count
Petofi’s occult tampering with the lousy
portrait of Quentin (whose werewolf face
Charity ran screaming from) he painted
by the dim light of three cerulean candles
in Sam Evans’s cramped 1968 studio after
arriving tonight by steamship from Paris.
Tony Trigilio's recent books include Craft: A Memoir (forthcoming from Marsh Hawk Press); Proof Something Happened, selected by Susan Howe as the winner of the Marsh Hawk Press Poetry Prize (2021); and Ghosts of the Upper Floor (BlazeVOX [books], 2019). He is a Professor of English and Creative Writing at Columbia College Chicago.
Episode 807: July 3, 2022
from Book 4, The Complete Dark Shadows (of My Childhood)