Ghost Drafting

written By

April 21, 2021

I wipe clean mantlepiece

polish blank the mirrors

scrape cold ash of fireplace

so the dead starve in their hollow

halls — remembrance

as negative renovation

stripping bare living rooms, patios, and kitchen

into one long corridor:

interior design of

four gray lines

to infinity, almost

touching, a throng

of fading ghosts between.


We please the living — stuff them

with electricity, air conditioning,

computers — their half-life

of milliseconds feverishly tapped

like a chain smoker's faulty lighter

her last ember

already cooling in the gravel.


The wraiths

trail ever on a thinner filament –

always fading

but never

erased.

More from this Author

Joshua Bridgwater Hamilton

Joshua Bridgwater Hamilton holds an MFA from Texas State University and a PhD from Indiana University. His books are Excavator (Gnashing Teeth Publishing) and the chapbooks Rain Minnows (Gnashing Teeth Publishing) and Slow Wind (Finishing Line Press).

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