My Ghost Attached itself to My Voice, Left Me
there goes my little echo:
liberated trapper-
keeper, snapped-cord
payphone breasting
all red ruby with
slippers up to my neck
& i say there is no place
like home / / there is
no place like
home / / there, there
poor dear
clairvoyants hand
out shimmer stickers
if you say you
saw that ghost!
i come up often
at garden parties – pull out
my wedding dress
like a parlor trick
& there i traipse by
in a deck
of cards – body
spoiled rotten
on a glass
table, body
in a sick robe
of starlight.
My Ouija Says I’ll Be a Hollywood Girl
Everyone I meet has a circus tent-
shaped tongue
wide open & I hear it loudly –
Judy Garland humming
to peat moss weaved across
her elbows like afterbirth.
I hear pianos, too,
sweating & panting
until I’m hot with the velvet
of my own horoscope.
I was taught to fear,
but subscribe to method –
touch-me-spotlights over
plastic leaves conceive me.
My Eye, Haunted by a Rag Time Girl
in a gas mask – jazz-age roaches swarm
over cold tea at the witching hour.
Her beaded gown trails over my cornea,
gulping sobs spiral from each pupil –
I don’t know which tears are mine. I’m reminded
of the bomb-crumbs. My lids close & I feel
the pulse of old gramophones keeping
me up all night with ectoplasm sleep-
sand & my iris a planchette
she twitches over time.
If I could bring myself to blink,
she might finally die.
Kailey Tedesco is a poet, the editor-in-chief of Rag Queen Periodical, a staff writer for Luna Luna Magazine, and a member of the Poetry Brothel. Her full-length collection, She Used to be on a Milk Carton (April Gloaming Publications) is forthcoming. For more, visit kaileytedesco.com.
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