SCRYER’S INVITATION
-for Hoa Nguyen
Having lived with a ghost for more than a decade I knew where he hovered and settled into walls and lights. This is where I aimed my scrying mirror. I sat on the floor with a handheld mirror and a larger one behind me. The point is to be able to see the larger mirror behind me with the smaller handheld one. The ghost is named Owen. He lived next door and killed himself where my new neighbor brushes his teeth each morning. Owen was 21; he liked books and used to work at Rizzoli’s Bookshop on Broad Street here in beautiful Philadelphia. He has heard me read many poems by others since his death. I would say, “OH, Owen, this is beautiful, listen to THIS!”
Late at night, blocking all light from windows I read Hoa Nguyen’s book AS LONG AS TREES LAST. By candlelight I read a poem out loud, saying, “OWEN, THE POEM IS TITLED ‘RAGE SONNET’ AND SOUNDS LIKE THIS….” At the end of each poem I snuffed the candle to peer into the mirror behind me through the handheld mirror. I stared for a long time, dark to dark, then the candlelight again for taking notes. Then the next poem by Hoa, “OWEN, THE POEM IS TITLED ‘I’M STUCK’ AND SOUNDS LIKE THIS….”
Finally there was a face in the mirror. After a long, assiduous stare I saw my face with another behind, then above. Was I imagining this? I can’t say. The last book Owen read when he was alive was MOBY DICK. When I told his mother she said, “That’s a children’s book isn’t it?” I said, “No ma’am, it’s not, not at all.” Tonight I’m here, with poetry by Hoa Nguyen, being productive with a 10-year suicide, but making sense is the last thing on my mind. By candlelight my note-taking and poem-reading, “I have thought for / a dirty starved circle” until the ghost and I were finished, and Hoa was finished. My (Soma)tic notes forming into a poem, thank you Hoa, thank you Owen!!
let if drive the conversation
wings we paint on
kite are how we
wonder for the sky
a bone of shade
we get excited and
then it’s just another
melted popsicle
remainder of the
sex act is nothing
you lean in on me for
the coasting
reputed to be the best
path to take in death
just take it and shut up sleeping in your corpse
it’s okay to let it happen like this
you don’t know how to
need it back and that’s fine
cardamom tanged lover
break off little bits for us
something we can come at again
right in the face Glock it up man
all the great leaders pulled
tonsils extracting some lasting words
pin us up on the board with
the rest of your receipts
I want to hang there
bathe in the grunts of
your woeful fraternity
open the senses and
let us begin to begin
let it all belong in here
sometimes a cock up
your ass is all it
takes to get the
point across
the made in china
sticker pulled away to
reveal the made
up in your
head sticker
