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Shadow
She walks home,
head on a swivel
over her shoulder,
nervous neck
held by a scarf,
still cold. Leaves
like sloughed skin
beneathher feet.
She walks faster.
A second shadow
grows from her own,
keeps pace,
its head a dark star,
its hand setting suns.
Séance
I watch from the couch, room dark,
incense clouding the air between me
and the women, their hands on the planchette
and the old oak Ouiji, they begin to ask.
The ceremony hemorrhages magic
with every letter, every second between
question and answer-how communion
with the dead is much like talking
with the living, a long distance
phone call, and I wonder what number
I should dial to speak with the blackbirds
on the power lines outside my house,
their electric hum.
Why won’t you answer me?
Why can’t you stay?
The candles nearly spent, their wax spills
onto the floor like slow waves. The women ask
if I’d like a turn with the board. When I shake
my head, it is a heavy rotary, my heartbeat
a busy signal, disconnected, still waiting for hello.
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M. Brett Gaffney, originally from Houston, Texas, is an MFA student in poetry at Southern Illinois University Carbondale, and an associate editor of Gingerbread House literary magazine. Her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in The Medulla Review, Newfound, Ruminate, Psaltery & Lyre, Stone Highway Review, Slipstream, Wind, and Penduline.
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