This poem is part of the SPOONFEED takeover of New Writing, curated by Kat Payne Ware and Sean Wai Keung. You can read the issue in full at spoonfeedmag.com/spoonfeed-x-new-writing
The dead ate their ghost steaks at the trestle,
elbows threshing, serrated ghost knives asqueal
on the china. Boy were they hungry. Their bowels
whimpered like chimneys in the wind. And once
the ghost meat was at peace inside them they stood
in turn to read their ghost poems, voices dwelling
in the sadder octaves only ghost throats reach.
The force of their applause wafted the bit of paper
with the wifi password clean off the coffee table.
Which is how I realised they were in the apartment.
When I asked them to show themselves they slid
their many ghost fingers deep inside my ears
and nose, took control of my hot sloshy body,
made me write this poem. Even now they refuse
to go, staring out from my eye slots as though
at third-floor windows in a house fire.
[a previous draft of this poem was published in Poetry Wales]
