Ghosts

Ghosts
By Joshua Michael Stewart
from Vintage Gray

If you've gone through life without experiencing
rejection,death will make it up to you.
The only signs of your existence: a small child
sipping tea with an imaginary friend, the family dog
jerking his head from sleep, ears perked
in the direction of an empty room. No wonder
the dead drop plates,slam doors, thump their feet.

I'm thinking myself lifeless, sick of the living-
how they flaunt their solid bodies, carelessly
spill blood down the sink as if warmth
were easily obtained. I'd miss the tiny city thriving
beneath my skin, the business of survival. Crave
Duck Breasts with Calvados, and applewood burning.
But it's the ability to imagine, the art of ignorance
I'd pine for above all things. Perhaps this is why
apparitions often haunt our dreams. It's not our lives
they want but our nescience-another chance, a gift,
which is to wonder what happens when you die.

Second Honeymoon

Second Honeymoon

By Kristopher Saknussemm

You know what I miss most?
Watching you try to fold maps.
And the way you always waited
until you were in the car
to spray on your perfume.

Do you still drive out through
the oil derricks when you need
time to think? Can you still drive?
My father says he can, and he's been
dead as long as you.

And I miss the smell of your skin
when you got hot dancing—
sitting in those cane chairs
listening to that stupid parrot.
My old man comes back at night
to drink Old Crow with me.
Old man, old crow. Hah. He knows.

Come back and smell like limes
and White Shoulders perfume and we'll drink
Tanqueray and ice. Come back to me
and we'll count mirages all the way
to Mazatlan. Please. I have one arm
out the window—and one hand on the wheel.

I'm about to cross the border
in a haunted car,
with three arrests, no convictions,
and nothing to declare.

Getting It Right

Getting It Right


What could it hurt to rewrite my adolescence--
for instance, say this time I kiss Anna after the Junior Prom.

as our limo drives through a night so dark I see only her lips.
The Globe can offer a correction: due to an editorial error

my football-crazed dog, Rambo, never collided with the fender
of that cruising Toyota. At fifteen, family eating pasta, let's say my father

no longer informs us he has throat cancer, there's no surgery
that steals his voice. This time Anna can arrive at my sixteenth birthday party

in a swimsuit. It wouldn't change the course of known events
for me to say we retired to the bedroom where I touched parts

of Anna's body which called to me like distant church bells.
And this time no one moves out: my brother still lives

in the basement, spinning a record twenty years long, an Eagles poster
"Live at the Gardens" nailed above his bed. My sister spends eternity

in the bathroom perfecting the art of mascara,
morning after morning her blond lashes bring a May sunrise

into our kitchen. Let Rambo score a touchdown running
a ten-yard fade. Let my father's voice call me to dinner.

The Herald can publish a new story: my parents purchase
that '89 mini-van, its tank big enough to hold 30 years of gasoline--

hands on the wheel, everyone buckled, my father leads us in song,
"The Long Road Home," and Anna too sits in the back,

her voice joining ours as she reaches for me,
her red bikini brighter than any brake light
~ Steven Coughlin