Forever Lust

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She asked me
Why ghosts
Keep appearing
In my stories
Like the milky incandescence
Of dead relatives,
evaporated friends,
femme fatales
And long ago
women who
Are forever
Lust
And I said
I don’t know
What do you think?
And she said
I think it’s about
Hope
Which made me stop
And confer directly
With the ghosts
Who prefer to call themselves
Hereafter Americans
Who told me that
Job one
Besides neatly folding
And packing away
memories
Made of fine silk
Into a steamer trunk
Like an ingenue’s backstage
handmaid
For the long journey
Home
Is to ride shotgun
And read me stories
Where the slapstick team of
maybe and forever
Collide like Coney Island
Bumper cars
And hearts
cry out like
Incubated
Newborns
Who never grew up
And sobbed into the night
Waiting to be held
Until now.

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