Devil’s Lake

Remember when we saw those maggots eating the insides

of a swollen cat? You glanced up and said the sky looked

vital, but in an ephemeral way, like a pop song from junior

year or the ghost of a former acquaintance, one of your

father’s colleagues who always made an ass of himself

at corporate gatherings. You can’t figure out why he’s

haunting you, but soon enough he loses interest—maybe

you were just for practice, like a clay pigeon or a model

baring it all for a gaggle of first-year studio arts majors

trying to conceal (a) their immaturity (b) their arousal

(c) their disinterest—and eventually he gravitates toward

more gratifying victims. You said you saw something

cramped and clawlike in the brume, a harbinger, and I said

you just wanted to use that word, harbinger, and you

said I was like the floral decor at the abortionist’s.

I scanned the sky for the omen you claimed was so apparent

but saw only a glob of nothingness the faded hue of cotton

panties smeared over the atmosphere like sandwich spread.

Oh, and a plane’s contrail. You accused me of just wanting

to use that word, contrail. Time had dragged the plane

onward toward its many vacations, and all that remained

was the glassy residue, the plane’s ghost, a wilted symmetry.

Everywhere around us, ghosts are deciding whom they

want to haunt. The cat debates between the tom and the coyote

or the lonely shut-in who kissed it too much and too fervently

on the mouth. Mainly children tend to choose their mothers.

And yes, you’re right, I just wanted to use that word, contrail.

You take it for granted I’ll haunt you, but maybe I’ll pick

the bottle-blonde Latvian lunch counter lady instead.