by C. E. Putnam
It’s getting late in the evening
to the patient
itself but to the
entity inside.
Before the patients go to bed
they must sweep the hospital-barn else
the mountain-ghosts will visit
the farm at night. If they forget all
the recently drowned will rise up
and make merry there lugging eels
in their arms and even months later
might remain somewhat visible in milky
twilight drunken jellied shrouds wandering
into the stream, the field. Their bloodless
comparing teardrop to teardrop—the Virgin Ghosts
dosing out on The Oil, busting cherries between
their thumbs. I need no second helping
to remind me when I enter
this house of dust the belief that if all went well,
as the Egyptians believed, we’d
all have amazing food and drink,
a wine cork squeaking at us from the afterlife
corpse material | ghost material
part shadow part bloody bones
its long thumb to my throat
its nail scratching the skin
of my wind pipe to coax out The Thing
a newly-hatched gosling
but smaller, somehow skinless
w/ eyes and ears and beak
it shivers, but cannot speak
and offers no cry when —
It eats it whole! or does it
pierce it through and cover it
with a coconut shell. It knocks
three times on its husk
& lifts the shell to face me
changed—a horrible spider
that crawls into my stuck
open mouth nesting in my hair filled
my dry and silent throat
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