The form of this week’s poem is called “monostich,” meaning each line is on its own, is its own stanza. That’s a perfect choice for such a haunted and haunting poem.

Mark Melnicove has been writing poems for 50 years, for 40 of them he has lived in the midcoast. This poem appears in “Ghosts,” a collection of paintings by Abby Shahn and poems by Melnicove.

I have only shopworn ghosts

By Mark Melnicove

I have only shopworn ghosts to break bread with tonight.

They have been pummeled and abandoned by life—

a malady without cure—weathered the assault,

and shepherded themselves in union to me by default.

Winter creaks in the rafters of my house

though it is June; I face blank walls without

windows and listen to them fume and chew.

As they swallow the wholesome loaf, it passes through

them like air. When I first spied their humps through glasses

they were shuffling their dark, lonesome masses

in from barren fields, where only last year

I planted wheat, thinking this would stave off tears.

And now they congregate, still hungry and feeding,

their wizened, pleading mouths and bellies bleating.

 

Gibson Fay-LeBlanc is a poet who lives in Portland. Deep Water: Maine Poems is produced in collaboration with the Maine Writers & Publishers Alliance. Poem copyright © 2018 Mark Melnicove. It appeared originally in “Ghosts” (Cedar Grove House, 2018) and appears here by permission of the author. For an archive of all the poems that have appeared in this column, go to www.pressherald.com/tag/deep-water.

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