Toasting his dark pint of Ireland
to the night,
red-rimmed blue eyes
pinched,
lips furious,
Mark bellowed at the bar,
I want to be raped by a ghost!
The packed patio gave back muffled laughter
because was this okay?
The vocalized desire
to be molested
by the dead?
The fifth round
of Guinness had tipped
our grave discussion
on demon possession
and the Ouija board
to the believability of the incubus.
For instance,
why do once popular actresses appear
on ghost shows to confess
about a teenage night when they woke
tense
with feeling,
with a sensation
of being pinned to pure
Egyptian cotton sheets
by something
breathing
like a bear, hot,
pressing its animal urge
down,
transforming the air
into a burning scoop of energy
best described
as an invisible erection?
No matter for high spirits, that,
and we knew it.
Hell,
Mark was the most stalwart
feminist among us.
He’d studied
Kristeva.
I felt ashamed
for chuckling but must admit
I wondered
if such Lothario specters
in the rooms of future starlets
laced
in the haze of cinema
were distracted
from the fabled tunnel of light
by the fated fame
of their prey,
or were they just wicked horny?
Maybe we can label
these cold
sex-offending phantoms
fans,
whose disembodied afterlives
make the fantasy of living
and the reality
of limbo
the same.
And what happens when a ghost ejaculates?
I was dumb drunk.
I wanted to know. A ghost
has little to save
but a fading existence
of ooze
and penetration. Walls.
Bodies.
Don’t we hold onto all
we have left?
So nobody consents to anything
invisible:
does that mean
each malcontent spook
is a rape of time
and space?
My friend Maia had had enough.
You disgust me, she said.
A body
is not a haunted house.
A house
is not a haunted body, I replied,
not really following
the thread.
She elbowed my bicep and said,
Look,
you can’t chalk up
the terror
and shame
of physical invasion
to stupid
metaphysics,
Creep.
I slunk over the sidewalk cracks
feeling creepy.
I was pleased
at how the silent passers-bye
pretended not to see us.
I do not condone rape!
I screamed at a nightingale
or bat.
Has any has-been actress
claimed a ghost
went all the way with her
and cited for the camera
proof
of ectoplasm stains
on the bedspread
in the morning?
Fuck you,
Maia spit.
It’s what it’s like
when you
don’t want it
to happen.
It’s what
possession is.
A dead man’s
dick
in your memory.
But do the possessed ever know it,
I asked,
not rabblerousing
but curious
and a bit scared
of the dizzies that hit me
and began to unwrap
my skin
from the moth-light
vision inside me.
If I died tonight,
Maia,
would you let me slip
inside you
one last time?
I flitted past the park where sodium-lamps
hovered
like celestial orbs.
I buttoned my coat against the poltergeist
of winter.
You can’t love a ghost,
said Maia.
My head was harsh wind.
Where was Mark? Where
was everybody with him?
I don’t remember the remaining blocks home,
only the same brownstone entrance
drifting past again
and again.
In bed that night,
I lurched awake,
succumbed under the weight
of Maia
sleeping,
her fists tight
against her breasts
on my chest.
Breathing
was difficult
but listening
to Maia sleep
made me sleep
and I didn’t dream
about anything
in those dead hours.
I didn’t feel anybody.
Photo by Ravages
