Invitation to Haunt

                                                                            for SRC

    you’re long overdue, it seems, close to three
    years gone now, and you’ve yet to appear
    for a single decent face-to-face haunting

    you know the sort, something cinematic
    and flashy, full of gasps, with a menacing
    soundtrack—consider this an invitation to

    materialize in the passenger seat beside me,
    sending the car into a nearly irreparable
    tailspin across the wet pavement, or

    rock noisily in the chair beside the bed and
    remain there long enough for me to tell you
    one of the thousand things I have to tell, or  

    appear behind me suddenly as I wipe
    a hole in the steamed bathroom mirror                    
    and set the steel blade to my throat, or

    drift before me, face grinning around that pipe
    clamped tight in your teeth, floating on the
    braids of smoke winding from my cigarette, or

    rise like a trout from the waters of this river
    that has run through our veins like blood,
    this river where your ashes paint the stones

    these few photographs inadequate, the
    ring of your laughter reverberating in
    my ears every goddamn day, not enough

    come on now, what’s keeping you?

                                                            __________

                     "Invitation to Haunt" appeared in the April 2007 issue of Thick with Conviction
                               and was nominated for a Best of the Net award.

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