Robert Campbell: Problems for Ghosts
Every asshole owned a ouija board.
Everyone burned sage. We holed up
in the old boat house. We weren’t
welcome anywhere. Dark machinery
drew us in with its rope and pulley,
guiding us along the docks to rest.
Troubles still followed us like flies.
Men and women with big hair came
to expel us with their angry prayers.
I was forever shouting between walls.
We became various falling sensations.
I’d open my mouth, and things fell in
by accident. Nothing became very
important to us. I don’t know why
we couldn’t sleep. The tied canoes
would bob and rise in the lake water,
floating there beside the slick, warped pier.
Our reflections stared like big black dogs.
ROBERT CAMPBELL is
a poet living in Lexington, Kentucky. His poetry and criticism have appeared in
Columbia Poetry Review, River Styx, Ninth Letter, and
elsewhere. A nominee for the Pushcart Prize, short-listed for the 2015 Black Warrior
Review Poetry Contest, and a third-place winner of the 2013 River Styx
International Poetry Contest, Robert is currently an MFA candidate in poetry at Murray
State University. He serves as reviews editor at DIALOGIST, an online journal
of poetry and art. More from this
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