Ghosthood

Natalie Louise Tombasco

& it feels like lying on a bed
              like a heap of winter coats during a dinner party to be sought-after when needed

 
as if I’m surrounded by a floor full of white sheets
                                                 all sulk & piss-off
                                                                                 & I have nothing to wear

 
& when I finally make an appearance, there is no Freddy Prinze Jr. waiting
                                                                                                   at the foot of the staircase

 
through my eyeholes, I see the rounds of mint juleps, cocktail weenies
                                           & how my mood lingers over guests like dead metaphor
                                                                                                      like lake mist
                         

& there must be some kind of cosmic explanation
                                                                               for ephemeral flesh

 
so far, there is no fade-to-black, no pottery sculpting, no Long Island Medium in the afterlife
                                 just me trying to speak through candlestick drip
                                                             aches through a door’s creak

 
& I’m sopping wet in someone else’s grief, spineless, asking the grandfather clock to gong
                                                                           keep going, going

     
wringing out my moth-bitten soul as the saddest exhibit
                                   of flambéing Baked Alaska takes place

 
& it is exhausting to be in a time loop of morning light slow-dancing on the kitchen hutch
                                         being tied to these lace curtains
                                         in Schenectady & you,

 
my love—did you like the paranormal doilies I’ve left? the dust I kissed onto the asters?
         I would drag a ufo through a keyhole

 
to say I am safe, but when I am walking
      I never reach the walls

Natalie Louise Tombasco was selected by Kaveh Akbar for the Best New Poets anthology 2021, Copper Nickel's Editor's Prize, and as a published finalist for Cutbank Books chapbook contest with her manuscript titled Collective Inventions (2021). She is a PhD candidate at Florida State University and serves as the Interviews Editor of the Southeast Review. Her work can be found in Gulf Coast, Diode Poetry Journal, Cincinnati Review, Black Warrior Review, Plume, Peach Mag, The Rupture, among others. Find out more at www.natalielouisetombasco.com