Gravity (poem)

 

 

 

Gravity

 

It was in the moonlight they carried

on advice of an old client’s volume

of ghost-spotting practices libraried

by saeculum, decennium

Was one of late ages, the folklorist said

to make test with an object possessed of the dead

 

It was of a Mrs. Turnfeather inherited

a chest of glass gems and a pants-press

and, boxed with a thoroughness unsparing,

forty years of Popular Mechanics

and figures in albums with an odd common trend

Deep-pocketed eyes blur aside from the lens

 

Where, it might be good to know, are buried

remains that feed the hyphae questing

in spirits of light mockery came married

their soles to fruiting bodies investing

“…and are not relations, not ours, not anyone’s.

Pass them,” the niece tells her husband.

“Pass them on.”

 

They feel, touching knobs, on their way through town

that caching these in cabinets or under dressers

will spread the curse, add ranks to the unatoned

For is this tie the sort that can be severed?

A store that sells antiques is burning lights

They ring and drop the albums on the steps

 

“What,” says the owner, entertaining…

“We are not a job-lot junk store.”

…that some fresh brutality premiering

Will light the cyberscape, though tiny comfort

Celebrity, to the writhing (or minced) remains

But curiosity makes him think again

 

Moonrays fall on sepiaed faces

Wind gusts, bare twigs, like weaver’s lacing

Make flicker stories in new-waked eyes

You cannot close the book, we have arrived

 

 

 

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Gravity

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(2020, Stephanie Foster)