By Joseph Hope
A ghost can borrow a man’s body
borrow his shoes, borrow his sleep
gift him a box of Roaches,
Crows, a catalog of despair.
A ghost can marry, take her vows seriously.
When discovered, a ghost runs inside
a bone to cry herself a new flesh.
A ghost may not be scary
like a beautiful cat, with white fur.
A ghost tells you about tales of love as
old as a dinosaur's bone.
Tells you about the other side calling
it fiction to avoid the gallows.
And who can kill a ghost, or hang air?
Maybe a ghost who is a lawyer
and an executioner too.
A ghost may care about colour
and many children, and wealth.
A ghost can be pale and happy,
bodiless and powerful.
A ghost leaps Into the fire and weeps
for a hundred years for her dead love,
and another hundred years
for a dead baby
that drowned in her sleep.
A ghost is happy when
called pretty
pretty pretty.
JOSEPH HOPE writes from Nigeria, West Africa. His works are forthcoming or already published in Augur, Reckoning, Timber ghost, Speculative city, Evening Street, Zoetic, New Verse News, Praxis Magazine, Ubu, Derailleur, Spillwords, SprinNG anthologies and more. He's a reader for reckoning press. He was a fellow in the 2021 SprinNG Writing Fellowship.
Pretty ghost theories can be found in Augur Magazine Issue 5.2.
