Ghost Ship | Poetry Chapbook

Ghost Ship is a collection of poems about
looking into the abyss and seeing a familiar face.

25 Poems, 47 Pages

Print or Digital Copy

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Ghost Ship

Mary Celeste—soul in need of a captain

drinks White Claw in a dry bathtub,

wearing a life jacket over her cocktail dress;

when the oxygen masks drop she will don hers first.

 

Lovers may spend the night, but no one is allowed to leave

a toothbrush in her bathroom

has been standing in a water glass since the blizzard of 1996.

 

Her days are elastic between 10 a.m. and dinner;

bodega flowers make evening fall like an axe

on the neck of fire escape shadows.

 

The landlord cries when Mary Celeste will not allow the exterminator in;

she feeds the mice croissant crumbs

in the small hours of the morning.

 

The tread of the delivery man climbing three flights up

sounds like footsteps on a gallows;

she can taste the pleasantly acrid smell of vindaloo through the door.

 

There is a pizza slice of East River visible between the taller, more self-possessed buildings—

she sometimes wishes for an earthquake

to shake the equanimity of brightly colored yoga mats.

 

True fact: traffic noise is louder on the fourth floor;

the tractor-trailers from Ohio and Pennsylvania idle on First Avenue,

trucker caps waiting for the sun to illuminate supermarket windows.

 

Mary Celeste remembers

the West Village shop where she bought a Rothko reproduction

is now an urgent care with a green neon cross in the window.

 

There are bite marks on the arm of a wooden chair;

she doesn’t know how they got there, but sometimes

she hears a leopard roar in the night.

 

Across the river the stars come out over Astoria

she can see a fold in the terrycloth sky;

for a moment the universe is quiet.