I knew a girl who also had a ghost
living in her mouth-what we called dumb

I cling to nightfall, hide my speed from my
belief of bronze. I’ve risen from a dream

No daylight ghosts among my flesh.
I am a candle pulling at the dark.

I knew you as pain, as specific need,
as the cold thing that was foreign.

Could you enter, once again,
what’s possible, what you made?

hesitant behind a flash of doves
in a darkness where I don’t exist

How this man moves my musky hair,
liquored in his slicker and slick chair,

“He picked up
a bee!”
is what

I set out a bowl
for the pepper birds.
“Pepper birds,”

I get on
the racket bus,
and see one empty seat