stale fork of chicken fried rice,
rotini staircase, and 
mornings i wake up in a beach house.

sometimes i wake up at one of the
houses we stayed at on the beach--
haunt a living room in 
salt water steeped-- the breath
of the gulls that blew the
morning into mist--
this is how we become ghosts
in the matrix of a memory--
i walk in the same rotini staircase
to the room that watches the lighthouse
over the channel--
count the whirls of the light--
hang your picture on the
walls of the house so 
that next family knows you're
still haunting--
forge with me over leftover 
chinese food--
we'll eat the 
cold
sticky
dry
chicken fried rice and reminisce
about the cold
crusts of pizza--
my father comes home with
sarcophagus of doughnuts--
wipe jelly on the walls
like blood--
scare the renters away
and claim the beach house as
our own--
open the windows and let
in the broth off the bay--
this about pinning
a taste to the feeling 
of a morning--
this is about the
incense of  toasted bagel
and bare feet--
this is about how you consecrate 
a house's walls with
your own memory-- ordain
each wall with jelly
and Boston cream--
raise me rotini 
back up the staircase to
the loft--
toss poker chips on
the floor as payment--
yes there's other ghosts here
and on the horizon 
the statue of a viking
walks-- boiling the water in channel
pour
mist
mist mist
in our windows until the
staircase
itself begins to turn
al dente-- languid 
in the morning--my father
stacks doughnuts like
prayer beads--
i watch the sun rise
in fried egg--
dried and refrigerator bitten
from a fork
of stale chicken fried rice.