Meditative Week of Poetry: Christien Gholson
It's been raining straight for the last nine months. Everyone blames the dead. It's because they are everywhere, violating boundaries, like mosquitoes. The dead have nowhere to go and so they drift through the walls, watch children play video games, watch couples have sex, stare at the patterns of wires behind the walls (in the secret compartments only seen by electricians and mice) while reciting the litany of wrongs they've suffered since being pulled up from the underworld. There's a strange fever going around since the rain began. It's all coughs, hunched backs, and nihilistic poetry. I bought one of the last tangerines in town (where was it originally from?) and sucked on it for a half hour, just to find some sun, get some sun into my bones. I spoke with someone's dead mother last night as she drifted past the end of my bed. She said she died in the flu epidemic of 1918, in Bruges. She asked if I was part of her fever dream. I told her that I thought she was part of mine. Stalemate. The toilets are all backed up. No water in the taps because the water works have been swamped. I saw a father and daughter out in the rain yesterday. He was washing her hair. The rain drops were big as baseballs. They exploded on the pavement. The father and daughter laughed and shouted above the noise of the exploding raindrops.
