Dinner Party
For once, somebody else’s ghosts arrive. I take
their shag coats — droopy viscose that imbibestendons and bones. They rummage through the dishes,
bellowing for petits fours like highfalutin terns. I beatthem back from the punch bowl and laden their wings
with baby powder. Oh, I taunt-tug on theirbone-cruncher bodices and make their tongues wiggle all
forks of black. The ghosts tell me I’m in luck.No, they do not ask me to blow into their mouths or
parley by the dumbwaiter heaped with zygoma.That’s not the point. They have come to spend the night,
guffaw by the chimney, and call for a jig like theycould be my body’s freshwater. And yet, they paperweight
volume of the Wingback chairs — wring the puce of them.If they could, they would lap up tributaries to my fledging
misdeeds. In flashback, this is called a rescue mission.about the author
