The Ghost Has No Home

    by Jeff Clark

    This morning in an alleyway I was startled by a face

    I seemed to recognize， in a dormer above a garage

    and so slunk up to him， who was ranting quietly，

    mauling the mind of some imagined ear out the pane

    as if maligned， or high， like one

    moony and almost witless in a poppy ditch，

    or one waking ill and supine

    in a wet bed of opening mullein：

    "I have no desire to theorize language——

    I was raised modestly and have sinned unspeakably.

    I would rather waylay and destroy

    whose voice molests me."

    On his desk a thin book I knew， a tragedy

    whose residue was a Sentry's couplet I half-knew

    and began to recite——startling him who turning was outwardly

    unknown to me——， "'Does it hurt in your ears——'"

    "Fuck Antigone——I detest language， I detest artifice，

    I would rather waylay and molest

    the beast that has imagined and pent me here."