the ghost is a presence defined by negative space, a nothingness gripping your leg, your waist, your lungs, your throat, your tongue, creating a silence surrounded by static.

I walk into the confessional booth.

I haven’t been in at least a decade,

and, between you and me, I should confess

When you died everyone came home

to fill up the church.

My son is afraid of zombies. He runs into my room at night. They're going to eat my brains! They’ll come in through the windows while we’re sleeping and eat our brains!

Hasbro says pass goFingers divinefrom worlds beyond

In windows behind the night glassof my second story bedroom, I seeyour one green eye as bright as a dying star.

Under the water

--nodeeper than that,

farther.

there once was a girl who forgot everything,who named herself Gretel.

How much of this worldwill be enough?

To say the scene: sagebrush

where the deer come to rest

from valley lights, farm trucks.

They step from the corn

Once upon a time a woman who hated birds married a woman

who owned a parrot that would live forever.

Last time we met, I was most

like a bride as I have ever been.

Charles Manson is Dead as the world loses order,

chokes itself in a pell-mell haze.

1. Do you remember how we met?

an understudy is a transgression

it occurs / imitation

it is christmas eve in my grandmother's house & everyone is in love with your gap tooth.