GHOSTS<\/p>\n
Someday I\u2019ll be like the prehistoric painter with a crooked finger
\nwho left handprints on a rock face; remembered for making
\na handicap into symbolism, threatened by oblivion every time
\nsomeone exhales. This is why I\u2019d rather leave you breathless
\nthan engage in conversation. This is how a spirit rattles chains.
\nOld gods challenged the imagination, visiting Earth like swans,
\nor else arriving like crepuscular rays, knowing dusk and dawn
\nto be the truest times of day. Lucretius believed all things
\nmattered, that even the least significant ideas were made up
\nof atoms. Great Caesar\u2019s Ghost was just a film he sloughed off
\nlike dry skin. All your recollections belong to someone else.
\nWe know cicadas molt before they get their wings, leaving
\nflightless memories clinging to the trees. Lobsters must
\nfeel the urge to come out of their shells. Maybe this is like
\nour need to be re-born. Maybe this is why we say we\u2019re new
\nevery seven years. But what is it with our interest in scars?
\nWhat about the impulse to apologize for what we can\u2019t erase?
\nCaptain Cook spied the sun through a state-of-the-art glass
\nand never discovered the secrets of Venus. But then, his sailors
\nreturned from Polynesia with tattoos. Is it love, or the lack,
\nthat makes us mark each other? Aeneas bore his father\u2019s weight
\nin front of every conquering Greek. A microscope confirms
\nthe wolf in every Border collie\u2019s DNA. There\u2019s a Trojan Horse
\nfor you. There\u2019s a little chimp in every Borderline personality.
\nSometimes we channel our ancestors in the dining room
\nand wind up like F. Scott Fitzgerald in the garden eating dirt.
\nAn Aborigine touching up ancient art will tell you spirits move
\nhis hand. Like once I spoke to a man who said he was my dad
\non a Ouija board. Once I read Paul\u2019s letter to the Ephesians
\nunder the influence of psilocybin. Some ghosts are better left
\nunread. Other ghosts are shadows of the most horrific things,
\nlike the girl who survived My Lai pretending to be a corpse.
\nWe can imagine so many angry ghosts. Maybe that\u2019s why
\nEpicurus wanted us to believe death was the end of our days.
\nMaybe that\u2019s why Yeats used his wife like a rotary phone
\nwhen he spoke with the dead. He imagined himself in death
\nas a mechanical bird. His readers would be voices speaking
\nhis disembodied words. At dawn I can\u2019t tell the difference
\nbetween horizon and the sea. Lucretius understood the ocean
\nrose to fill clouds with rain. It always rains in Gothic novels.
\nEnglish ghosts pass through the wainscoting. All the ghosts
\nare haunting future ghosts. Farm hands who listened to voices
\ntelling them they\u2019d be better off if they bought the farm
\nare buried in the cemetery with the rest. If you drive at night
\nyou might catch a glimpse. There\u2019s a difference between
\nwindrows and the woods. There\u2019s a vine wrapping the wrought
\niron fence. If you appreciate someone\u2019s work, Lucretius said,
\nit really is a part of them that\u2019s gone to your head.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
“Ghosts” previously appeared in Cutbank 77.<\/em><\/p>\n John Wesley Horton<\/a> (aka Johnny Horton<\/a>) spends many summers teaching creative writing in Rome, Italy for the University of Washington. A New Englander by birth, he grew up in the Midwest and now lives and works in Seattle. He’s recently published poems in CutBank, Poetry Northwest, Borderlands, Notre Dame Review,<\/em>\u00a0Alive at the Center,<\/em><\/a> and City of the Big Shoulders: An Anthology of Chicago Poetry<\/em> (U. of Iowa).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" GHOSTS Someday I\u2019ll be like the prehistoric painter with a crooked finger who left handprints on a rock face; remembered for making a handicap into symbolism, threatened by oblivion every time someone exhales. This is why I\u2019d rather leave you … Continue reading