Only Ghosts Get Stories

No staying quiet for them,
bagging around in clanks and moans
and swiped white sheets

Meanwhile we're stuck
clammy in the muck
no midnight parlor tricks for us
nothing to conceal the tackiness
our final failures (he's not holding his breath)

We were always strangers here,
piling silos with polished bones,
growing evidence
swept into dark corners
to keep the lanes tidy

still the horses gallop back alone
the rats patrol the gate
the snake was always in the garden
and the grass is high

Did we always know there'd be nothing
when the unbecoming
meet the unbecomed?

What else to do, ever sleepless,
but clank and cry?

back to issue

Clay Waters has had poems published in Green Hills Literary Lantern, The Santa Clara Review, Poet Lore, and Roanoke Review. He lived in Florida until the age of four and recently returned to find it hasn't changed a bit. His website is claywaters.org, featuring his self-published cozy mystery novel Death in the Eye.