I can’t plan for my ghosts,
they come when they want,
and their slick chatter
makes me mad. If I see a woman
choosing pears at the market,
a ghost might hiss
she’s leaving her husband
to run off with the family CPA.
When I find chicken bones
in the gutter that moats my home,
I’ll know the leavings came
from a boy with full-blown AIDS.
It’s like that, the knowing, the stories
my spirits float in their spare time,
even if I don’t want the juice.
And while I just get a spilling
of gossip, I still know the dirt
on my best friend’s date:
he’s an embezzler, or
he drinks to feel safe.
I wonder sometimes
if they spew my truths.
That one, they’d say,
her mother, forty years ago,
almost gave her away.  

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about the poem:
First published in Gingko Tree Review, October 2003  

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Amy MacLennan has been published in Cimarron Review, Rattle, South Dakota Review, Folio, Controlled Burn, Wisconsin Review, and Red Wheelbarrow. One of her poems was included in So Luminous the Wildflowers, An Anthology of California Poets (Tebot Bach). Amy has appeared at the Petaluma Poetry Walk and the San Luis Obispo Poetry Festival.
E-mail: amaclennan at earthlink dot net  

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