Mark Fisher’s ghost watches me sleep

David Greenspan

 

He sits in a thin wicker chair by the bookcase
thumbs untitled spines     mumbles about lack of sunlight
my body communicates via a series of twitches
medical textbooks don’t talk
we’re gluttonous with nostalgia for what might have been
he asks a question     coughs     asks another
I raise my right arm     a calico cat speaks
ignorant collector of wheelchairs     haunting is ordinary
consolidated mourning     ask any creature
a fan hums at my uncovered feet
he tells a joke that begins with a professor walking into
capital’s bile taught me mental illness
heroin taught me everything else
he says both are fetish     reproductions of violence puckered & devotional
a bar     the joke begins a professor walks into a bar
grades their colleagues’ grades     writes
about inorganic learning outcomes
he walks to my kitchen     drinks a cold glass of water
poverty born again     in my dream
I’m smoking     an office bathroom somewhere     likely Florida
you can’t take this decay     I yell
he places a hand on my ankle
the origin of Monday is a funhouse mirror     he explains
anyone who looks in sees themselves
red handed with medicine     countless Diet Coke cans
what is hiding beneath this skin of delusion
pearled undeath     poppy bulbs bursting
spoiled & bitter     he bites into one as I wake
I wake pulling hair from my thigh
dotwork of grinning faces

 

 


David Greenspan is an MFA candidate at the University of Massachusetts Amherst and serves as a Promotion Editor for Slope Editions. His poems have appeared, or will soon, in places like Blood Tree Literature, DIAGRAM, Elderly Magazine, The Southeast Review, The Sonora Review, and others.

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