Denton Loving is the author of the poetry collection Crimes Against Birds (Main Street Rag) and editor of Seeking Its Own Level, an anthology of writings about water (MotesBooks). His writing has recently appeared or is forthcoming in Iron Horse Literary Review, Gulf Stream Literary Magazine, The Tishman Review and The Threepenny Review. Follow him on twitter @DentonLoving.---------
My Ghost
My ghost doesn’t haunt shadowy corridors
but crowded hotel bars and dance halls with guitars
and fast fiddles. My ghost doesn’t like me
to have fun, so my ghost whispers names of the dead,
says Remember me. When I do, I hear my ghost
boasting, I’m over you, I’m beyond you.
I wish my ghost would follow the light. But no.
My ghost pops up like a bad apple. Worse,
my ghost knows my innermost fears, moans
I never loved you. I’m sick to death of this
one-trick ghost, of this tired-out hoax. Give me
a showboat who switches off appliances.
Give me a specter who creaks floorboards at night—
a proper ghost I can usher to the other side.