On:

In these waters lie gravesof my father’s blood, ancestorswhose final breath was water –rows of savage mountains,mantle of sea closing around them. They understood wind change,barometric drops, electric smell of lightning.Tide seeped inside their shells,turned in their bones – nowhere to hide. A glass dome covers me,covers ruffled bay, whisperingContinue Reading

On:

Shortly after losing my best friend, I met Alan and his daughter, Sabrina, at a local support group. Over the years I lived through Lori’s biopsy, diagnosis, chemotherapy, radiation, remission, reoccurrence, and then her agonizingly slow death as she fruitlessly sought more trials and more treatments. Alan and Sabrina’s lossContinue Reading

On:

I once met the Ghost of Lim Rix.Named Anon, he used mischievous tricksto taunt and persuade meand finally made merhyme words which we never should mix.Continue Reading

On:

I was summoned from the void by a witch named SuzanneWho named me, faced execution in her village in Scotland.Her daughter Deborah was spared, taken to safety in Holland,Her own power grew under the watch of a Talamasca man,Whom she, as an adult, came to seduce—A numinous legacy bound toContinue Reading

On:

We moved out there in spring. The trees in that place were something to see, out in the wind, blowing like nothing all day and night, howling through the cracks. The lights were small, and our faces loomed big at each other all night around that little table. I setContinue Reading

On:

Even with Samhain closing in, there’s no fog or mistthat divides the living and the dead. I’m already a ghost –a brief blur you might remember. No halo around the hunter’s moonwhere clouds hover then shrug and move on. Maples and oaks shufflewhat’s left of their leathered leaves, bear theContinue Reading

On:

I see her now, raking the firewith an old brass poker,sparks fly up in protestat such brazen intrusioninto their warm,drowsy dying. She is afraid of death,avoids any tv murder,or prolonged, fatal illness.Drawn out, death bed dramas,occasions to put the kettle on,to rake the fire to ashes,to put the cat out,Continue Reading

On:

She had ghosts in her blood–born with them in her cells–raised with them–heard their voices at nightwhen her mother said prayers. When her babies were born,the ghosts followed the childrento their new lives –born in their cells.Ghosts knew themfrom their mother’snightly prayerswhen she spoke their names.Continue Reading

On:

(To SH, JR, KB, and anyone else I’m forgetting to thank for continuing to haunt me) Haunt me gently, as your lifetimes reappear. On my windshield reflection, in sudden trepidation. Thought long gone away, in a shifting mind’s state. I won’t ask you to leave, and I probably never will,Continue Reading