Tonight the ghosts
are throwing punches again.
One has brass knuckles,
the other a razor wire wedding ring.
Jackson Pollack blood splatters across the walls.
Down the hall we huddle like a human tent
but there is no force field for this kind of thing
and the imagination can only do so much.
Little Sis screams, “Make them stop!”
My brothers don’t hear her, the ghosts don’t either.
They throw jabs, an uppercut, a haymaker.
The cupboards rattle as glass explodes against a water spout,
the trailer rumbling, trying to hide inside a sink hole.
More Jackson Pollack, this time chunky yellow vomit,
cracked teeth, broken fingernails,
bloody tufts of hair and scalp.
Little Sis asks, “How can ghosts bleed?”
I reach down and whisper in her ear,
“These are different ghosts.
They’re not our parents.
They’re not.
Now say it after me.
These are different ghosts.”
In Between Hangovers 