The Wave
How do you define
a ghost? One poet wrote
“she sees ghosts before breakfast”.
And I wrote that my mother was a ghost
librarian. How would she catalog a ghost? Under
Parapsychology? Haunted stories? A misty manifestation
of what you do or don’t want? Does everything always
come back to want? That even if we let the plot
meander and spiral, it will eventually
release, maybe not with a climax,
per se, but perhaps
with a wave.
*
“Imagine small talk when the weather is perfect”
after Emilia Philips poem titled “The Queerness of Eve” from “Nonbinary Bird of Paradise”
the title of this poem is a line from that poem
Time bends a conversation
like a double rainbow.
I ask if you can tell
where indigo
meets violet
but you hear
violent. An arch
can crack
from subsidence;
from poor
initial foundations;
from a shift
in temperature; from
the placement
of a hand.
*
Jessie Carty (she/her) is the author of eight poetry collections including Shopping After the Apocalypse (dancing girl press, 2016) which was nominated for a 2017 Elgin Award. Jessie is a part-time freelance writer, teacher, editor, and full-time Instructional Designer. She recently got back into blogging about her travels to visit all 100 counties in NC: (http://notjessica58.blogspot.com)
