Poem draft
Dead Girl's Paroxysm
Suddenly I got up from the table
in the middle of your rant, spittle popping,
coffee swilling, storm clouds echolocating
their lost thunder, and I realized
I'd lost myself. I ran to the ladies' room
where, behind the closed doors, sets of shoes
toed each other nervously like spooked cows,
brown leather and wedges murmuring, and
as my name echoed without response,
they gossiped, ruthless, as if I weren't there,
which is true. I wasn't. A terrible ache
shuddered the swinging doors, the lights.
Everyone in the bookstore dog-eared their Peace
Corps pamphlets, stilled their tea pots, and someone
said, "Was that a ghost?" and I said, "No, it was me!"
but who was to believe me? You were daydreaming
of polygamy, Malawi, and where you could be
a politico-cum-babe-magnet without the heat distressing
the leather interior of your town car,
so the fuss was lost on you. I found me, in case
you were wondering, but only the stumpy bits--
ghost-ankles, ghost-hips, ghost fatty liver, ghosts
cable bill. My moth-eaten ghost was deep in the woods
playing Frisbee golf with dead branches. Imagine
the look on my face, the spotty me, the me
with invisible hunks gored from her body,
the look reading,
I've found you, we're not lost anymore, my singlet!
I stuffed her back in my mouth, tasting moth
and cobweb. She slid down an angry yolk,
despite the terribly handsome storm cracking
its egg-wash over the whole town, every street
bearing a grim glaze, little tags poking from ghost-
shirts reading all man-made materials.
---
What ARE you?
Suddenly I got up from the table
in the middle of your rant, spittle popping,
coffee swilling, storm clouds echolocating
their lost thunder, and I realized
I'd lost myself. I ran to the ladies' room
where, behind the closed doors, sets of shoes
toed each other nervously like spooked cows,
brown leather and wedges murmuring, and
as my name echoed without response,
they gossiped, ruthless, as if I weren't there,
which is true. I wasn't. A terrible ache
shuddered the swinging doors, the lights.
Everyone in the bookstore dog-eared their Peace
Corps pamphlets, stilled their tea pots, and someone
said, "Was that a ghost?" and I said, "No, it was me!"
but who was to believe me? You were daydreaming
of polygamy, Malawi, and where you could be
a politico-cum-babe-magnet without the heat distressing
the leather interior of your town car,
so the fuss was lost on you. I found me, in case
you were wondering, but only the stumpy bits--
ghost-ankles, ghost-hips, ghost fatty liver, ghosts
cable bill. My moth-eaten ghost was deep in the woods
playing Frisbee golf with dead branches. Imagine
the look on my face, the spotty me, the me
with invisible hunks gored from her body,
the look reading,
I've found you, we're not lost anymore, my singlet!
I stuffed her back in my mouth, tasting moth
and cobweb. She slid down an angry yolk,
despite the terribly handsome storm cracking
its egg-wash over the whole town, every street
bearing a grim glaze, little tags poking from ghost-
shirts reading all man-made materials.
---
What ARE you?