THE POEM OF THE DAY
THE WISHBONE GHOST
The Wishbone Ghost
dances to the rattle
of his own crooked spine
cut into dice with snake eyes
drilled on all six sides
no seven or eleven twice
and the better to see you with, my dear.
The Wishbone Ghost
does the shimmy-shake
waltzing serpentine into many dreams;
a friend of all Freds.
He comes to worship, not to win;
to know, not to be known.
The Wishbone Ghost
prances down the wires, a moveable force
searching for an irresistible object,
and sometimes
he finds Her.
The Wishbone Ghost
steps on every crack
hoping to break the bank,
and to Grandmother's house he goes.
Stone Woman
tends the growl garden out back.
The Wishbone Ghost
is dazzled by Stone Woman,
her ferocious feral chants,
snarling polyrhythms,
and moonlit Rousseau dreams
to which he lion comes.
The Wishbone Ghost
kneels on busted knee
to worship the sacred blue smoke
of her morning coffee.
No need to pray for rain, or tempt the storm;
Stone woman can see the Ghost
already has lightning strikes
jigsawed down his back.
Too many dances with thunderstorms.
That's how his bones all turned to wishes.
The Wishbone Ghost
pushes himself up
from the stony ground of the growl garden
and lurches into a crude jig,
flapping his arms like a bird,
cawing like a crow,
hopping and swaying
on one leg
like a drunk trying to toe the line,
tripping the light fanatic,
a one-legged dancer in the kingdom
of the footless
and blind.
The Wishbone Ghost
dances in place,
dances in the place,
dances the place,
the always and never place,
the place he's always going to because he's already there,
The place where
no matter how many Freds he’s astaired,
no matter if he puts the jive before the shuck,
no matter how many snaps he’s fingered,
no matter if he can tap in time to a Cesium clock,
Stone Woman’s owl eyes are there to ask
“Who, who goes there?”
“Ain’t nobody here but us ghosts.”
The Wishbone Ghost
is full of nobodies;
a nobody a day keeps the Teeth Mother away.
Thin as a wishbone,
fat as a Neolithic Venus,
She’s quicker than scissors in the hand of the Crone.
The Wishbone Ghost
know what he knows
and unknows it as well:
The there that isn’t there
is Hers and not his.
Ain’t no nobody leaving
when there’s no there there.
Dana Pattillo
PoD 107
8:52:51 PM 
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