Ghost Girl Read online

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Dedication

  Acknowledgements

  TOURING THE DOLL HOSPITAL

  FALSETTO

  AN OFFER RECEIVED IN THIS MORNING’S MAIL: - (On misreading an ad for a set of ...

  THE SLIGHTLY PERVERSE WORLD OF MUSIC

  THE FETUS’ CURIOUS MONOLOGUE

  FATE

  THE FLOATING WOMAN

  WITCH SONGS

  SWISH

  THE ORACLE AT DELPHI, REINCARNATED AS A CONTEMPORARY ADOLESCENT GIRL

  THE PASTRY CHEF’S DAUGHTER

  FUCK YOU POEM #45

  LISTEN, LISTEN, LISTEN

  BUDDHA SONNET 1

  BUDDHA SONNET 2

  BUDDHA SONNET 3

  THE NEW DOG

  THE DAYS OF THE WEEK

  POEM FOR BERNARD

  WATCH

  ON WANTING TO SEE GHOSTS - Ghosts only come to those who look for them.—Holeti

  CIRCUS POSTER

  PASTORAL OPERA SYNOPSIS

  WHITE BLINDFOLD

  THE OGRE’S TURBULENT ADOLESCENCE

  DOMESTIC

  SWANS

  DENIAL

  WHAT THE BODY WANTS

  BAR AUBADE

  ODE TO TOAST - “When you were alive ’Twas your favorite food. . . .”

  ODE TO SEMEN

  (POEM THAT SPILLS OFF THE PAGE) - A List of Answers to the Question: “And what, ...

  A BLESSING AND A CURSE

  A WIDOW

  MIRIAM - “And his sister stood afar off, to wit what would be done to ...

  HYMN TO THE NECK

  IN THE ASPIRIN ORCHARD

  Notes on the Poems

  About the Author

  PENGUIN POETS

  Also by Amy Gerstler

  The True Bride

  Primitive Man

  Past Lives (with Alexis Smith)

  Bitter Angel

  Nerve Storm

  Crown of Weeds

  Medicine

  PENGUIN BOOKS

  Published by the Penguin Group

  Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 375 Hudson Street,

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  Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices:

  80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

  First published in Penguin Books 2004

  Copyright © Amy Gerstler, 2004

  All rights reserved

  Page vii constitutes an extension of this copyright page.

  LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA

  Gerstler, Amy.

  Ghost girl / Amy Gerstler.

  p. cm.—(Penguin poets.)

  eISBN : 978-1-440-68413-5

  The scanning, uploading, and distribution of this book via the Internet or via any other means without the permission of the publisher is illegal and punishable by law. Please purchase only authorized electronic editions and do not participate in or encourage electronic piracy of copyrighted materials. Your support of the author’s rights is appreciated.

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  for Sidney and Miriam Gerstler

  Acknowledgments

  The author would like to thank the following people for their kind assistance:

  Bernard Cooper, Dennis Cooper, Liam Rector, Judith Moore, David Lehman, Megan Williams, Paul Slovak, David Trinidad, Tony Cohan, Alexis Smith, Tom Knechtel, Brian Tucker, Jane Weinstock, Sue Greenberg, Dinah Mills. And most especially, Benjamin Weissman.

  Many thanks to the Durfee Foundation whose Artists Award helped make it possible for the author to complete this book.

  Poems in this manuscript were previous published in the following magazines, sometimes in slightly altered form:

  Epoch, Fence, Tight, Slope, Luna, Lungful, Faultline, Bedwetter, Sycamore Review, American Poetry Review, Mall Punk, 5 AM, The New Yorker, Pool, The Cafe Review, Columbia Poetry Review, The Literary Review, Crowd, Green Mountain Review, Indiana Review, Washington Square, Mississippi Review, Poetry/Memoir/Story, and Margie.

  The three poems “Buddha Sonnet 1-3” originally appeared in an artist’s catalog for Darren Waterston published by St. Anne’s Press. The poems “Swish” and “Witch Songs” were texts written for a collaboration with artist Alexis Smith entitled “The Sorcerer’s Apprentice.” Portions of those texts originally appeared as part of that installation, which began at the Miami Art Museum and traveled to the Museum of Contemporary Art, San Diego.

  TOURING THE DOLL HOSPITAL

  Why so many senseless injuries? This one’s glass teeth

  knocked out. Eyes missing, or stuck open or closed.

  Limbs torn away. Sawdust dribbles onto the floor

  like an hourglass running out. Fingerless hands, noses

  chipped or bitten off. Many are bald or burnt. Some,

  we learn, are victims of torture or amateur surgery.

  Do dolls invite abuse, with their dent-able heads,

  those tight little painted-on or stitched-in grins?

  Hurt me, big botched being, they whine in a dialect

  only puritans and the frequently punished can hear.

  It’s what I was born for. I know my tiny white pantaloons

  and sheer underskirts incite violation. Criers and cribwetters

  pursue us in dreams, till we wake sweatdrenched

  but unrepentant, glad to have the order

  by which we lord over them restored. Small soldiers

  with no Geneva Conventions to protect them,

  they endure gnawing, being drooled on, banishment

  to attics. Stained by cough syrup, hot cocoa, and pee,

  these “clean gallant souls” wear their wounds as martyrs’

  garments. We owe them everything. How they suffer

  for our sins, “splintered, bursted, crumbled . . .” Every

  bed in the head replacement ward is occupied tonight.

  Let’s sit by the legless Queen doll’s tiny wheelchair

  and read to her awhile if she wishes it. In a faint

  voice she requests a thimbleful of strong dark tea.

  FALSETTO

  A guy with a heavenly singing voice like Al Green’s

  can make you believe he’s being melted alive, liquified

  by pure yearning. The result is a kind of bee-less sung

  honey. The singer I’m listening to this hot summer noon—

  Dean, or is it Gene—sounds like he’s auditioning to be

  female. No, it’s more like he swallowed a woman whole,

  without even mussing her lovely hair. Now their duets,

  entwined laments, spill from his lips, reveries of what

  each has embraced, squandered, fucked, drunk up.

  His singing gives off a whiff of what we once called sin.

  Then she slipped off her girdle, and we recognized

  her as blessing, or maybe her kid sister, bliss. Jonah

  in the whale’s belly pleaded sweetly with god,

  warbled a high-pitched SOS. Falsetto elected a nest

  of tiny silver cobras who twist themselves into tr
eble clefs

  to represent it on paper. Those within earshot close

  their eyes as the cries of bog men and ice maidens mating

  rise from an abandoned amber mine. He who sings perfect

  soprano like this, he who wields the orchid sword

  cannot be resisted, at least until this record ends.

  AN OFFER RECEIVED IN THIS MORNING’S MAIL:

  (On misreading an ad for a set of CDs entitled Beethoven’s Complete Symphonies.)

  The Musical Heritage Society

  invites you to accept

  Beethoven’s Complete Sympathies.

  A full $80.00 value, yours for $49.95.

  The brooding composer

  of “Ode to Joy” now delighting

  audiences in paradise nightly

  knows your sorrows. Just look

  at his furrowed brow, his thin

  lipped grimace. Your sweaty

  2 am writhings have touched

  his great teutonic heart. Peering

  invisibly over your shoulder

  he reads those poems you scribble

  on memo pads at the office,

  containing lines like o lethal blossom,

  I am your marionette forever,

  and a compassionate smile trembles

  at the corners of his formerly stern

  mouth. (He’d be thrilled to set

  your poems to music.) This immortal

  master, gathered to the bosom

  of his ancestors over a century ago,

  has not forgotten those left behind

  to endure gridlock and mind-ache,

  wearily crosshatching the earth’s surface

  with our miseries, or belching complaints

  into grimy skies, further besmirching

  the firmament. But just how relevant

  is Beethoven these days, you may ask.

  Wouldn’t the sympathies of a modern

  composer provide a more up-to-date

  form of solace? Well, process this info-byte,

  21st century skeptic. A single lock

  of Beethoven’s hair fetched over $7,000

  last week at auction. The hairs were then

  divided into lots of two or three and resold

  at astronomical prices. That’s how significant

  he remains today. Beethoven the great-hearted,

  who used to sign letters ever thine,

  the unhappiest of men , wants you

  to know how deeply sorry he is

  that you’re having such a rough time.

  Prone to illness, self-criticism

  and squandered affections—

  Ludwig (he’d like you to call him that,

  if you’d do him the honor),

  son of a drunk and a depressive,

  was beaten, cheated, and eventually

  went stone deaf. He too had to content

  himself with clutching his beloved’s

  toothmarked yellow pencils

  (as the tortured scrawls in his notebooks

  show) to sketch out symphonies, concerti,

  chamber music, etcetera—works

  that still brim, as does your disconsolate

  soul, with unquenched fire and brilliance.

  Give Beethoven a chance to show

  how much he cares. Easy financing

  available. And remember:

  a century in heaven has not calmed

  the maestro’s celebrated temper, so act now.

  For god’s sake don’t make him wait.

  THE SLIGHTLY PERVERSE WORLD OF MUSIC

  Someone wakes you

  by blowing gently on your eyes,

  or tickling your chin with a handful of flowering grasses.

  Remember the glassed-in greenhouse, the old fire station,

  herds of black faced sheep?

  Even strayed cows or a lone goat

  may wander along a swath of fallow, unfenced mind

  in search of tastier grazing from time to time.

  Tonight, the reigning notes are sad and forlorn,

  long lost octaves hung out to dry,

  flashes of forgotten nights,

  besotted, bawdy, sleepless,

  and all too brief.

  THE FETUS’ CURIOUS MONOLOGUE

  My tail was longer than my hindlegs

  not so long ago. I remember the Flood

  several Ice Ages being covered with fur

  chalk beds trilobites giant ferns

  a scaley monstrosity crawling out of the sea

  croaking a great surprise awaits you

  Will I too grow fins? feelers? an elephant’s trunk?

  Cheerful to this hour, afloat in my private ocean,

  I plan to make a grand entrance,

  howling in molten dialect, Even the sea’s spooky depths

  shall not alarm me for I am already sunk!

  The life of darting shadows, the deceptive surface

  of the world—I shall see right through

  to the seaweedy bottom. I will not be fooled!

  The body’s hinges itch.

  Gill slits ventilated my neck

  until yesterday.

  A newfangled monster,

  Now what will I breathe?

  green lipped mussels

  horseshoe crabs

  coral and snails

  waterworms

  all sing of unalloyed joy and reciprocrated lust—

  proof of progress, proof that evolution

  is not just erosion, proof chiseled from limestone quarries

  of womanly virtue (ageless patience, the warp and woof

  of heredity’s tireless loom),

  proof we do not really die

  when our brief terms expire

  My pink lungs are mutated

  swim bladders of fish.

  A solitary wasp of consciousness

  buzzes in my head while below,

  the usual two room shack,

  a bi-chambered heart is being constructed.

  Someday I will have a scarlet hat and a ring,

  perfect pitch,

  a longing to be admonished.

  Torn from the shores of immortality

  I’m due to wash into the world soon,

  wearing the face of a retired opera singer

  mid-aria, famished and squalling.

  I’m a festival of cells.

  My blood’s as rich as Christmas

  punch. Was I a horse thief in another life?

  A blasphemous priest? What were my crimes?

  What have I done to deserve to be bottled up thus?

  FATE

  Reports of strange gatherings at the church in the pines

  have been filtering in. It’s said photogenic intellectuals

  appear from time to time as mist in the kitchen. One groans,

  “Yes, I built the doomed ship and was promised I’ll suffer for it.

  In lives to come I will know titanic miseries. This I have been:

  a hindrance and a snitch and a babysitter and a ranch hand.

  And a fry cook and a civilising influence and a whimperer.

  Catching wind of the near-death experiences of the little blind

  waif traveling to Africa made a believer of me. She cured

  my not-so-subliminal jitters. ‘Picture me naked, if it helps

  quiet your mind,’ she suggested, fingering pins jabbed

  into the small black cloth voodoo doll in her pocket.

  Now she belongs to the soil and the sky, proof of our puniness.

  When I lie my cleanest, most blameless self down in a bare,

  airless room, a warning voice, hers of course, jabbers

  gruff barracks talk. She says, ‘You’re all washed up, buddy,’

  ‘At last, my love, I’m here,’ and ‘Get dressed quick, for you

  too have been summoned.’ So when I wake up smack dab

  in the middle of the night shouting the names of my fellow


  passengers, prisoners really, urging them to jump

  into the heaving sea, now you’ll know why.”

  THE FLOATING WOMAN

  Know, my dears, that gravity

  is conditional. Its grip is no stranglehold.

  Had my mother lived I could

  have taught her this. I was nine

  when she died clipping coupons

  at the kitchen table on a sweltering day.

  She wore only her slip, inside out, so you

  could see the seams and mended hem.

  A baseball game flickered on TV

  with the sound off. I could hear small thuds

  as figs from the tree in our yard fell and hit

  the tin roof. I caught pneumonia

  that summer and for months outslept

  everyone, even the cat. Then Dad

  crashed his beloved car (an ancient

  pale green Mercedes with fins

  and a mermaid hood ornament

  he’d sawed off an old swim trophy

  of mother’s one inebriated evening).

  When I got well I began to lie

  in a big pile of eucalyptus leaves behind

  the house and practice rising. With my

  talents I could have toured the world

  but I do not profit by travel.

  I let a local magician think

  it is all his doing, but in truth I float

  under my own power. Sacrifice lightens,

  voluntary or not. Loss rids us of ballast.

  Then come the ascensions . . .

  WITCH SONGS

  Women really are diabolical.

  Ask one, she’ll admit it.

  They’re all witches under the skin.

  Plotting, scheming, their recipes

  need ingredients like graveyard

  dust and possum teeth.

  Those they have molested fear them.

  They persist in begging

  and become unpopular in their villages.

  Witches are said to kiss beasts.