Morrow Point

When Carmilla Returns, Styria Is Different

LindaAnn LoSchiavo

Covid reminded her of the Black Death,
Fatalities unfolding silently
As muslin shrouds, infecting secretly.

She’s deprived of uninterrupted sleep.

Roused from bleak dreams, Carmilla senses filth
Inside her lungs – uncleanliness.  What’s changed?

A pox has blanketed the air with rot,
Its toxic aftertaste.  This complicates
Her scheme – thirst urgent as a last request.

Even in darkness, she recalled her curse:
Ceaseless pursuit of youthfulness whose price
Is stolen blood – warm red wealth that buys time.

Without it, she’s the color of waiting.

Disease changed Styria, its ticking stilled:
Tram stops disused, shop signs like tattered skin
Peeling away in grim unhealthy breeze.
Old beech trees loomed like ghostly chaperones.

A curtain flutters like a helpless moth –
Reveals a sleeping, pink-cheeked blonde.  Alone.

A vampire knows the contract she has made
With hunger and the power of beauty,
Ruled by unfathomable appetites.

She hypnotizes, casting sly shadows
Shaped like her victim’s most unrealized
Desires, then enters – cloaked in this disguise.

Native New Yorker. Poet. Writer. Dramatist. In 2024 LindaAnn LoSchiavo had three poetry books published in 3 different countries; two titles won multiple awards. In 2025-26 two titles are forthcoming: “Cancer Courts My Mother” and “Vampire Verses.”

“A segment of my formal verse functions as dispatches from the Bar-do—that liminal space I escape to with my imaginative alter-egos and my gothic predilections.”