my aunt's house is haunted
by unsent birthday cards, rainbow chocolate cookies
and the ghost of their sister
my aunts believe in sending
birthday cards to all the dead relatives--
set their pictures on the end tables
to populate their house with
black and white
memory-- pull their hair
in cotton balls from
the medicine cabinet each morning--
and aunt Flo still writes to
Frank even though his car
horn
stuck
blaring-- broke his neck
year ago through the windshield
of a red Thunder bird--
my aunts sleep in the living
room now--
the attic is too populated--
and the hearth of an air conditioner
churns loud enough
so they don't hear--
their sister Joan trying to play
duck, duck, goose with
them as they sleep--
some nights she's twelve again--
mary janes and white tights
stained from kneeling in the front lawn--
the youngest girl skips
beauty and moves on to radiance--
other nights she comes home
with the plaid jacket
of a boy--
hangs it over the bar
and mixes her sisters Manhattans
as they sleep--
plays with their
perms and kisses their
foreheads as if they were her mothers--
Joan died there in
the living room sewn into a white bed
with all her memories already bled
into the walls the house--
and as she died she heard
her nephews calling to the ghost
of their mother from a Ouija board
on the attic floor--
she sang
Ave, ave, ave maria MARIA
her sister Mary who counts everything
in decades of the rosary--
wards off unwanted demons
with charms of ring bologna
and prayers cut in cubes of
cheese-- each holy mystery
is accounted for--
and aunt flo still worries
the lightning storm
will bring
the roof crashing down
and all the ghosts crowd
the living room--
Joan puffing on a cigarette
and Priscilla writing
poetry
in the squares of
a crossword puzzle--
talking in the language of
the Ouija board--
their nephews
painting their names
on the basement
wall like hexes or prayers--
aunt mary sips coffee
now and reads her
fortune in the grinds at
the bottom of her
dead sister's mug--
they tell her to
count the branches of
the tree in the front lawn--
harvest the pears sunk into
the grass
to make a pie for the ghosts--
they're hungry--
they play the organ
when the three tv channels don't
serve them well enough--
Joan, Joan
who should wear the fish necklace?
mary asks Joan out of tradition not
reverence
and Joan is only six so she
breaks a plate on
the dining room plate
and laughs in the pipes--
mary marks the morning
with a stack of birthday cards
for the ghosts to descend from the attic
to collect--
leaves out a plate of rainbow
chocolate chip cookies so the
ghosts won't
eat all the ice cream when
they sleep--
i'm never going to die--
says aunt flo
splits a cookie with her sister--
seals another letter
to Frank
written in the voice
of a car horn--
Priscilla leaves poems
in mary's coffee grounds--
kisses aunt flo goodnight
and eats the last cookie off
the glass serving plate--
