October 2024
Bio Note: I’m mostly still in isolation mode, which appears to agree with my inner hermit. I’ve used this solitary time to read books again, aiming to read 100 books a year, and to make cards. My poetry has appeared in Prairie Schooner, Atlanta Review, and The Nation. I live in rural central Virginia in the woods, surrounded by quiet and wildlife.
Masquerade
This Halloween, I’m wearing my usual
disguise, no frantic digging through old clothes
for bell bottoms, tunics, head bands.
Invisibility is my superpower. I fade
into the background, match the woodwork
with my splotchy, thinning skin and hair.
My eyebrows have nearly vanished.
I’m quiet, no longer shouting to be heard,
but I listen and I watch. Not much is lost
on me, although you won’t remember our
meeting or my name. As usual, I’m wearing
sturdy jeans and sneakers, comfy long-sleeved
shirts in dark colors, not the bold, bright
prints of Laugh-In nights. Even my car
is dull and boring. Lost in the sea of other
Camrys painted beige, no need for
a cloak of anonymity, I disappear.
Originally published in Rat's Ass Review
Ghost
for Blaise Allen
We have a word now for that hurtful act
of people disappearing from our lives
when they don’t return calls or emails,
ignore cards and messages. They seem
to have crossed into another realm of souls
and memory, distant as dead parents with
their siblings, biology professors, those
much older men I bedded in the eighties,
some of whom I ghosted when I moved
from my condo to a house and changed
my number to unlisted. I went dark in lives
for whom I’d been a light, a bright spot
in their weary week. This year a blue moon
coincides with Halloween. On this night,
we’re told the veil thins between the worlds
of the living and the dead. Those barriers
are porous, permeable pellicles between me
and those who’ve moved on in life or death,
like my only sibling—ghost sister. Drink from
this teacup with lily of the valley painted
where you place your lips, and hear my mother’s
bad advice. Sing “In the Still of the Night,”
hit from 1956. Mix grit and spit with old words
from diaries with keys. Call forth spirits.
Originally published in Aberration Labyrinth.
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