“The duende … won’t appear if he can’t see the possibility of
death, if he doesn’t know he can haunt death’s house…
– Federico Garcia Lorca
I hear the slide
Of a shotgun
Racking in my mind.
Mud spreads in the rain,
Spreads along the path.
Rain pools
Among the stones.
The creek
Continues to rise.
I’ve fired a gun
A few times. The bullet
Cut a line in the air – I tore
The skin of the sky.
My house was built
By a flooding creek and the water
Continues to rise.
I’d enter
The past with a gun.
I’m afraid of a force
That sheds so much sound.
A woman
Slept by her window
And a stranger came inside.
May she curl
In the snail of her mind.
Another stranger, I
Would offer her my dark,
May she wrap herself inside.
I hear
Angels drive her in light.
Crumbs on the table,
Weeds through the stone,
Landscape
Eroding in water.
The door is glass.
And my room is mostly glass.
And I’m afraid of a watcher
Behind the parted shades.
I’m afraid
And a gun’s in my mind.
I’d enter
Her past with a gun.
The steps leading down
To the bay are under water.
Wet as what’s hidden
In the living.
No separate rooms
For the ones who go easy.
It’s the angels
Who drive you in light.
They did not find
The poet’s body. And they did
Not find. I’d enter
His past –
The door is glass.
Come in. And the room
Is mostly glass.
And I’m afraid
I’m becoming
The haunter.
Crumbs on the table, weeds
Through the stone, landscape
Eroding in water.
Mollusk mind –
I slid its eyeless face
Inside. I, too,
Have come to eat.
I’ve cut and been cut
To my need.
Find the children,
Bring them inside.
They’re gone
But their names are the words
I still whisper.
If I offer you my fear,
I fear you’ll cut me down, oh,
Nothing
Out there in the rain.
I cannot haunt
The house entire, I’ll try
The space between.
Dirt on the glass and it streams.
Glass obscuring
A darkening sky.
If I wake in the night,
I won’t approach
The bathroom sink.
I have no need
For someone else’s well.
I’m afraid of the window
Reflected in the mirror’s glass.
Afraid
Of my own face rising
And the blank eye
Watching from behind.
When I am the ghost,
I’ll take absence for me.
