Universal Monsters
poems by
Jamieson Ridenhour
~40 pages, $13 (+ shipping)
Projected Release Date: February, 2025
An Advance Sale Discount price of $8 (+ shipping) is available HERE prior to press time. This price is not available anywhere else or by check. The check price is $12/book (which includes shipping & sales tax) and should be sent to: Main Street Rag, 4416 Shea Lane, Mint Hill, NC 28227.
PLEASE NOTE: Ordering in advance of the release date entitles the buyer to a discount. It does not mean the book will ship before the date posted above and the price only applies to copies ordered through the Main Street Rag Online Bookstore.
Jamieson Ridenhour is the creator of the audio drama Palimpsest, author of the werewolf murder-mystery Barking Mad (Typecast, 2011) and writer/director of the award-winning short horror films Cornerboys and The House of the Yaga. His ghost play Grave Lullaby was a finalist for the Kennedy Center’s Cohen Playwriting award in 2012. He has published scholarly articles on Dickens, LeFanu, and contemporary film, edited the Valancourt edition of LeFanu’s Carmilla (2009) and wrote a study of the urban Gothic, In Darkest London (Scarecrow, 2014). Jamie has taught writing and literature for twenty-five years, currently at Warren Wilson College in Swannanoa, NC.
If our monsters of choice represent what we fear the most, Jamieson Ridenhour knows the most terrible haunts emerge from inside our own houses. Whether it’s zombie girlfriends, problematic Frankenstein wedding nights, or wolfman secrets, in this elegant collection Ridenhour invites readers to “cling together in the flickering dark” with him and confront—or even welcome—the monsters around and within. — Erin Keane, author of Runaway: Notes on the Myths That Made Me
Whiskers
I was bearded with words.
Prepositions curled around
my mouth, and below
my chin participles
dangled.
I reveled in sideburns Whitmanesque,
and all admired the love-letter
moustaches, ironically drooping
over a hate-mail
goatee.
But the verbose foliage scrawled
along my jaw bored you.
With an eraser I shaved,
watching adjectives
scatter
and nouns pile below me
in the basin. Above
the wordy waste I stared
at the mirror, bald-faced and
mute.
Universal Monsters
We stay up late,
my mom and I, fighting
sleep to watch the son rise
bolt-necked against the father–
creation, creator. Karloff, Clive.
You could read the reason
in those heavy-lidded eyes,
reanimated motivation
clear to see by the light
of a burning windmill.
Like always he burns in the end. But we
cling together in the flickering dark,
huddled for warmth in the fatherless house,
fighting sleep, my mom and I,
rooting for Karloff.
Wolf-Man
“Even a man who is pure at heart”
—a hokey intoning by a Romani matron,
and poor Larry never was pure from the start:
telescopically peeping on Gwen and then patron-
izing her shop to woo her in the stalls
uninvited. He seemed beastly at the first,
before Bela bit him, all wolf-and-catcalls,
hairy hands on a walking stick, cursed
before cursing. It may sound banal, but
some men wear fur on the inside. Pull
back the skin and you’ll find Larry Talbot
was always a bit of a wolf. Prideful,
lusting, hungry, hunting, immature.
A moonlighting wolf-man by nurture and nature.
