ghost poems anthology

EDITIED BY TAYLOR ? & HANNAH STREETMAN

AN ANTHOLOGY

G H O S TP O E M S

EDITIED BY TAYLOR DENNIS & HANNAH STREETMAN

G H O S TP O E M S

AN ANTHOLOGY

VANISHING POINT PRESSBELLINGHAM, WASHINGTON

Copyright Vanishing Point Press 2016Cover artwork by Hannah StreetmanCover photo courtesy of pixabay.comSpirit photographs by William Hope, courtesy ofpublicdomainreview.com

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced inany form by any electronic or mechanical means (includingphotocopying, recording, recording, or information storage andretrival) without permission in writing from the editors.

This chapbook was set in Lora and Alegreya Small Capstypefaces.

Ed. Dennis, TaylorStreetman, HannahGhost Poems.

The editors of this anthology have long been fascinated by theghosts of old campfire stories: friendly ones, vengeful ones, oneswith unfinished business, the ones who throw books across aroom, the ones who don’t know they’ve stopped living, the silentones we try so hard to summon.

Interspersed within the following poems you’ll find gorgeouslyunnerving images from the famous medium William Hope, whohelped people make contact with departed loved ones through hisspirit photography after World War I. The practice was laterproven to be a hoax, but in them you can see evidence of thegrieving families’ real hauntings.

The poems themselves call to mind flickering candles, the chillingpresence of an absence, and the cold breath on the back of yourneck. They may ask you to summon your own ghosts.

Taylor Dennis & Hannah Streetman

dearreader:

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Leah Beck is a graduating senior at Western Washington University. She hasbeen studying Creative Writing for ten years, and her biggest passions areJudaism and Jewish summer camp. She lived and studied in Israel for fivemonths last year, and will be moving back in September of this year.

Madaleine DiMarco is a senior at Western Washington University majoring inCreative Writing. Her primary artistic medium is composing song lyrics but sheexplores poetry and prose in her literary career as well.

Jordan Kubichek is currently a Junior in the Creative Writing program at WWU.When not reading a good book or binge watching a TV show, she can be foundexploring the bowels of her own mind. She is drawn to images of imaginationinserted into the everyday world.

Jessica Lucas has been writing since third grade, she has never been published,and she hated all poetry until about two months ago, in February of 2016. Shehas written one play, performed at WWU. Her writing idols are MichaelCrichton, Stephen King, and Joseph Conrad, and she lacks the ability to finishthe stories she starts. She maintains the belief that her story about world-conquering robot chickens is her greatest work to date.

Harvey Schwartz attempts to model his life after the Lost Boys and Peter Panbut doesn’t always succeed. He tries to remember, as Joni Mitchell said, we arestardust, we are golden, and we’ve got to get ourselves back to the garden.Despite daily amnesia he reboots and plugs away. Publishing credits include: TheSun, Jeopardy, Whatcom Reads, Clover, Inkspeak, Tulip Tree, and otherpublications. Two of his films have been accepted in film festivals.

Ethan Smith grew up in Whatcom County and is a student at WesternWashington University. He’s a contributing writer to What’s Up! Magazine aswell as having been published in Inkspeak Magazine and the Noisey WaterReview. He hates biographies but is pretty okay with ollerblading, cocktails, andthe ocean.

Hannah Streetman is a writer, editor, and all-around word enthusiast. Some ofher other poems have appeared in Jeopardy Magazine and Labyrinth Journal. Shecan’t decide if including her own poem in an anthology she edited is cheating.

D’Arcy White is a at lover who lives in the Pacific Northwest. She attendedWestern Washington University for a degree in Creative Writing and Spanish.She writes poetry regularly and attends writing events around Bellingham asoften as she is able. She dreams of one day owning a house with a lake view anda garden full of stargazer lilies.

contributors

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lost &foundI bought my pink converse sneakersat a garage sale in the heat of a Montana summer.Twenty-five cents was a steal and the womansaid her daughter had left them behind in the move,eager as she was to escape westward, to the other sideof the Rocky Mountains. I didn’t blame her.A couple of years later those shoes pointed mein the same direction. Sometimes I feel her ghostly toesstretching the soft canvas, the laces strainingagainst two feet too many. Luckily the holes in the sidesmake room for our stories, wearing thin like the soles.

Once, when she was three, my friend Grace’s armwas touched by a ghost. She would complainof phantom fingertips just below the elbowwhere the rest of her arm used to be. She ranbut her shoes caught invisible sidewalk cracks.I’m jealous of her. I would never feel lonely if I knewthat somewhere, someone was always holding my hand.

Jordan Kubichek

1

slitherShe stands just behind metippy-toed in my pink Barbie shoesthat don’t light up anymorehands crumpled like old papercrammed in her overall pockets.Snakes squirm around the house.I feel them in each of my veinsflowing with my too-hot bloodand I trust the snakes.She’s got her thumb in her mouth,she begs me to turn around, but I don’t hear her phantom breathover the weight that drags meto the floor, as the snakes withinme squeeze out of my fleshand take over the empty house.

Jessica Lucas

3

ghosttownWhen you decided to abandon meI had to leave this town.Two decades here Now all I want is out.

It’s hard not to live in the pastin the place that made me who I am.Empty promises -Reckless abandon -Half-pipe headaches -And heartbreak.

Your memory’s a noose around my neckGetting tighter from the places we’ve been,I’m drinking myself to deathat the bar you left me at.

Your presence is hauntingthis place belongs to ghosts,You took away everythingThat made it a home.I will run southLeave this border town behind,just something left to rotin the back of my mind.

So load up your guns,the end times have come,Cause there’s nowhere left to runWhen what’s done is done.

Ethan Smith

5

dad'staxi

Dad was the kindest person I knew.So I figured he would have a calm ride

to the next stop.

His last years were at The Willows RetirementCenter, where it was impossibly warm, as if asouth wind blew through the heating system

like the calm breeze of a nursery rhyme.

The profound certainty and quietudelulled me to sleep like I was hypnotized.

Dad used to joke; “Joan in 212 got a taxi ride last night.”I knew he was talking about an ambulance to the hospital.

Once I stayed at a haunted B & B. High on a hillwith turrets, heavy black furniture and a mural on

the third floor depicting all its past tenants.Their eyes followed me and my hair stood on end.

Maybe that place was a blemish from the underworld,a volcanic eruption of discontent,

upheaval of turbulence.

I couldn’t sleep, as if a knife in the groundshattered the night and caused banshee-like shrieks

from the pain it inflicted on those down below.

But The Willows seemed anointedas a portal of peace

by the great unknown…for drifting asleep.

7

When the taxi came for Dad, thunder crashedand lightning flashed inside me.

I was in a nearby room politely listeningto a hospice nurse’s directions.

I should have excused myself and rundown the hall to send him off.

But I didn’t see the headlights coming.

Harvey Schwartz

8

sleepingin rm. 315Julia Lowell was a prostitute.A Lady of the Evening.A whore as common as the rest of usswinging by her neckon the third floor of the Copper Queen Hotel,just longingto remove the blankets from the feetof any sleeping man without repercussion,and crawl into bed beside them – acting the small spoon.

These men aren’t copper miners anymore.Disappointing. She always enjoyedthe scent of the Queen Mine, un-washable dynamitesmoke in their hair and workedinto the fibers of their coveralls,kicked into the corner of the room after payment.These men smell like hotel soapand occasionally their wife’s perfume.

They don’t tip anymore eitherand she can’t decideif going unnoticed is better or worsethan going unloved. It’s too badshe could only hang herselfonce.

Leah Beck

9

ponderingghostsI’ve never met a ghostlike the Blue Lady, or the HeadlessHorseman, but I know plentyof another variety.

Walking, breathing, blinkingghosts who’ve lost their livesto melancholy, marriage,the marketplace— ghost factories.

Speaking with one is as spookyas any other paranormal encounter,like being roused by a shaking bedand claw-marks on your back.

I am haunted mostby the moments I squanderpondering ghostsand my potential to become one.

Madaleine DiMarco

11

headgamesShe whistles in their kitchen,a red ribbon tied around her neckkeeping her head attachedto the rest of her body.

Her husband, a contractor,comes up behind her and bringshis hand, white paint crackedon his palm, to her neck, wanting

to untie her like a present. Silkslips undone, vertebrae splinteringapart like the steps of the woodenladder he left leaning against

the uneven doorframeof their tilting old house.

Hannah Streetman

13

the truthabout lossii sometimes wonder if the ghosts ofthose we’ve lost live somewhere in ourbodies — possessing momentarily oureyes, & our skin to reveal glimpses ofthemselves. in this way, they leave tangibleproof that they occupied thesame time & space.

iii hope that in the autumn eve of ageloss never breeds within you complacency.

i hope the love always cutsdeep & sweet.

i hope the losing weighs heavy because thereceiving came easy.

i hope the ghosts of the lost onesnever leave you, so that you are always on thecusp of just seeing them, of feeling thegust of air sweep as they pass.

i hope losing always leaves everything in your world a bit wider apart.

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iiithe truth about loss is — it is reliablyunpredictable. few are blessed with the knowledge ofwhen & what their last words to their lost one willbe. you can practice for death, but you cannot, even withexperience, predict how deep it will cut you.

the truth about loss is — there is onlybefore & after, & the after leaves permanent

white space.

D'Arcy White

16


Warning: These poems may containcontent and images that are unsettling

to citizens of this corporeal realm.

ghost poems anthology

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