The Fainting Girl
Fremantle Prison, Autumn Equinox
The old prison fills with ghosts, like the hanged man
who murdered six in their sleep, burned their bodies,
left them beneath a pile of ashes from cats he tossed into flames.
Troopers found a ring in the ash pile with a man’s name
engraved on the inner rim, which led them to the killer,
with his smooth face and warm, brown eyes.
They twisted his arms while he bent and cried.
To avoid the noose, he held a live charge in his mouth,
but succeeded only in ripping away his cheek and half his jaw.
When he tumbled to the rope’s end, tied with a British nautical knot,
his head tore off, bounced and rolled along the filthy floor.
After that execution, they banned journalists.
Watch for the woman who drowned her children one night
when sea roared over dunes near her cottage door, and sang to her
of young ones on the sand combing each other’s long, green hair.
You can see her sometimes at barred windows, with her white dress
and empty hands, but every night you hear her song,
how she names her sons, folds their little arms across their chests.
“Fly home,” she sings, “fly into the marrow of your bones,
daub your wounds.”
Her voice is ice, frozen fingers on iron bars.
“Fly to sea foam, and rise on the water, fly with pelicans and gulls.”
Some see a snowy owl perched on a wooden tower above the south
cell block, but others see only torchlight or a naked bulb.
But mostly fear the fainting girl.
At the equinox, she collapses, terrified of screams
in the darkness, and sudden cold.
Those who stoop to touch her shoulders as she hunches there,
lose themselves in the mist around her eyes.
Their fingers tremble.
All food seems nothing but rot and ashes mingled on a wooden plate.
Departed Things
The only ghosts are the ghost of memory.
What can I do if the dead return, night
after night, with hands burning in the wind?
What can I do if they hover close,
if their whispers collect
on the curtains like a new form of dust?
My mother settles on the couch, deals
the cards, but soon loses
patience with the game. She talks
and talks, winding back on old miseries,
calling up the fires of an ancient rage.
She ignites my face and my forehead
bursts into flame. My father wades
through black waves of her memories,
through raised voices and the howling
of cats. His back is turned, but smoke
rises from his cigar, rich and fragrant,
as wind tears branches from oaks, and night
trembles with the nearness of departed things.
Steve Klepetar lives in Saint Cloud, Minnesota. His work has received several nominations for Best of the Net and the Pushcart Prize, including four in 2016. Recent collections include Family Reunion (Big Table), A Landscape in Hell (Flutter Press), and How Fascism Comes to America (Locofo Chaps).
Two gems, Steve. Congrats.
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