I died on that hill…

“Our body is not in space like things; it inhabits or haunts space.”
— Sara Ahmed, Queer Phenomenology

I

will

haunt

this hill

as long as

it holds me here

in its thicket. Smoke

is not proof. It dissipates

like any event. The burning

grass killed all those creatures

who lived within it. As flame is not

the fire, but essence within it: I am

trapped in this briar—punctured

with sin. A deliverance in red,

crackles in their terrible lit

torches, their hot agony.

Consumed, I raised

up this hill

to haunt

me

 

GhostBro Investigates at Town Hall

(based on a local YouTube documentary)

As a clairvoyant he feels like he sees men,

all men, occupying the courtroom seats.

 

Hot spots in the aged attic where he appeals

to dust motes as ghosts or angels. Greeting

 

them with a reverence reserved for none of us

living. Spirits gather in their geometrical points,

 

they mingle near the angular joints, the energy

of underbed clustering allows their movement

 

and momentum. So he says. Paranormal elevators

act as special vessels for astral ascent. They collect

 

behind windows and eyelids, inside the fevered minds

of men. Notice the aura of spirit orbs, not possibly

 

lens flare: it must be Death’s dark glint there.

A seance grasps at mortality: hear us!

 

As the hunter ensures his eternal existence

by creating spectral company in the afterlife

 

as insurance against oblivion. Conversations

with the dead ensure real friends beyond the grave

 

who will, undead, be just like him. So greet cautiously,

but with kindness, that unaccounted for knocking

 

at your front door. It may be the ghost of a man, feeling

for the knob with transparent hands, hoping to be let in.

 

In my new devil costume, the lipstick is blood

but as a sweet-toothed boy

I bit into each apple, hoping

to become a razor blade.