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after Lucie Brock-Broido
winter crossing
bleak annulled
dulcimer damaged
choir miraculous
air &
monstrous ravishing
animal fallen
calls nightsky
ghost spectacle
again lynch
light loved
flint bliss
starfish tissue
shrouds lukewarm
sheathes everything
fanatic vanishing
Copyright © 2020 by Constance Merritt. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on January 22, 2020, by the Academy of American Poets.
I. Looking at you was the hardest thing. Taking off my clothes While you stayed dressed, II. Nothing. III. My body a knife, my shoulder Its blade, I cut a path before me. Or sometimes I’m an apprentice ghost Unsure in the art of haunting; No one sees me as I pass. IV. No one sees me as I pass Though someone is always looking, Translating texts of skin and eyes As: our lives are whole without her.
All Hallows Eve, Sweet Briar College, 2003
I came as a ghost to the party,
no costume required, I only had to wear
the brilliant skin, the ruinous eyes,
the body poised in transit, unwriting
the myth of sex. I came as a ghost
to the party, though we pretended
not to notice a palpable hovering