A Post About a Ghost

I just read this post by Sarah Sloat.  Her new chapbook is out from Dancing Girl Press.  I just ordered my copy, you should get one for yourself, as I don't share well. Her post referenced the blog Via Negativa, where I became enamored of the ghost poems published there.  Here's a ghost poem of mine.  I just read it the other night at a reading in a de-sanctified church, with a pale Jesus stretching his arms out behind me on the wall.

Visitation

In the concert hall in Evanston I met my dead sister,

I could sense

her bulk when I closed my eyes; she was silent

and invisible,

two years gone, shot in the head with a stolen

gun, killed

by her own determined hand, and in the dark theater

I reached over

and briefly touched that hand, now made of air, held

her cold hand, while on stage

Greg Laswell sang his songs, which repeat

and repeat

that all of us are broken.

Do our sad dead return? Sister oh my sister I want

to believe

but I do not believe—I listened

to the music,

I’d downed three glasses of mediocre

red wine

and fancied I sensed you, a presence. But

I write this

in daylight, away from music, away from booze and all its

suggestions; I’m riding

the train, dust swirls across an asphalt lot, dust,

some dry leaves, Kathleen

are you with me today? There’s a seat free

next to me

on my commute, oh dear dead and intangible sister,

in this moment

could I reach out and hold your lost hand? Might I myself

live beyond

the imperfections and needs of the body? But here’s

what I know:

I spoke

to kindly men in blue suits, I initialed the forms,

every portion

of the ruin of you given over

to the crematorium’s

devouring

glare.

Some say this world will end in fire.