Ghost people
Every passenger in this
car is someone
I have seen before
just not this year
just not these eyes
some in passing
just not in person
in dreams or dreamlike
outings looking for guides
I don’t know why today or
here but they come to say
some vital thing I
cannot hear
just not these ears
or seduce me into
looking over my
shoulder and
seeing double
with these eyes
so they can
see inside
with these eyes
and call upon me
whenever they should
need these
eyes
Breaking a curse
this curse has
loopholes,
from which to either hang
sorrows or swing
into its traps
or find a crack
each crest glows with
promise but dims
when i reach in.
each breath
sucks the plastic to
my nostrils.
each fall kicks
hot wax
around my heels.
is the antidote
in the eye of the imaginer
of sunrises,
creator of days
and hours who makes
the grass green
and tries not to
wonder what exactly
it is looking at?
or does that tangle
break farther
down the trail?
low tide
the lines we
invented, vectors of might interchange
without the consent of the governed,
piloting stringy gondolas
to pointed finish line
confined by a single dimension
a y axis no why asking
and never expecting
a drop
a change to rip the stuck
tongue from ached teeth and
get those juices flowing—all
the while thinking myself lost
when i have lived and dreamed
through here with subtle turns
of sight thousandfold
sometime sprinting
away from the shame
of wasted ground,
backpeddling in a gasp,
atoning, or trying to
complete sequences
of consequences
abandoned long ago from apathy
or contentment, visions
of finality, mistaking
familiarity for wisdom for reward
or another way around
and then before i know
where to look
next it
is not—
a
tide coming in
or going out
|
but it is
but it is but
awareness
hoping to retract
on purpose
and when your eyes roll back
and you work
the thing
itself outside
— the thing itself
is not the tide —
***
Lindsay Hargrave is a performing poet based in Philadelphia. She has previously been published in Anti-Heroin Chic, and regularly performs with the improvised music group Oarsman. By day, she is a research assistant and copywriter in higher education.
Armstrong Literary 