Ode to Barbara Steele

By Steve Luttrell

Oh, the horror!
the horror of it!
an actress seething sex appeal.
This is a poem
for Barbara Steele,
a dark erotic beauty
enigmatic and seductive
and pale to the point of ghostly.
Her eyes, a dark invitation
to a deep and dangerous place
of curses and castles
and corpses kept in crypts.
How ironic that this
“Queen of Screams”
would come to wed
a man named Poe.