Ghost Story (1)


I hitched a ride in a warm Oldsmobile 
that rattled its engine. The paint was silvery-blue 
and we moved through the town’s light 
like a smudge of gasoline vapors blurring 
the roadside trees. His radio played songs 
on the AM dial. I left a fog on his windows. 
The road here is fully blind and mudded to rust 
with half-melted snow. I was dropped off
in a brown-leaf ditch. I left my things in his car 
and the detective returned them to my mother. 
Her front door swung in slow on its hinges. 
She keeps my coat folded in the hall closet 
with mothballs and cedar because now I am 
a cold case. I smell of loam. Everywhere— 
I mean nowhere— is my home.





Ghost Story (2)


His oilskin is in tatters. The lighthouse
lamp spins out through the rime from shoal
to sand, then tussock, then gable. He rides
the beam’s rail to the widow’s walk, around,
and back out. He leaves a bit of Sargasso 
by his boy’s crib. He likes to touch bottom. 
He wears a starfish as a boutonniere. 
An owl’s eye is perfect for spying on the wife
who’s loving another seaman. Move on, move on 
or blow the man down. He’s met a banshee 
on the beach with a beautiful comb. She sings
as he works the teeth through, her tangles 
like a mess of marine grass. Then they kiss
and turn to mist. 





Ghost Story (3)


The branches hang heavy with fruit, the crutch
keeps the branch from breaking, the apple skin
is true and unbroken, but the worm is born 
in the fruit. A glimpse of white pauses
where a body was baled. Metal against metal 
is the sound of tools sharpening. In the barn’s loft 
light can slash skin through the rotted roof. The hay 
can make a man sneeze. A man can gather 
his anger and a girl can lose her head. I lived 
the orchard. Died the tortured. What worm 
is born in a buried heart.





Ghost Story (4)


I have this square of carpet, these
roaches to keep me company, this closet’s
wooly gloom for a blanket. A real blanket, 
too, but it smothered, wound tightly 
and around itself as if it were infinite, fed
like paper rolls from those old player pianos, 
which only play dirges. I was small for my age--
what happens when children are pinned under 
the thumbs of mothers who try to make us
pure with our hunger. I remember the state 
coming and going, coming and going with 
forms to fill out. Once, in a public bathroom, 
I took the hand of a stranger, but she shook 
me free. I could bedevil my mother in her 
room, but there’s no point. Her madness 
provides spirits to speak with, and she
never wanted me.