“Ghouls,” “Horrorshow” & “Dissolution Method” by Caroline Crew

Ghouls

A slow-figured thaw spends 
       itself for a season of skirt hitches, 

of just the wind thumbing a hem. 
       Some shadows have surprisingly solid 

erections. The ghost of shrugs past 
       flicker, too, in my back. I believed in them 

truly, once. Ghosts—knowing the yelps 
       I unstrangled held the dirges of the dead, 

a sweep of this winter’s long coat
       too elegant to be mine own only. The march 

of progress swims forward, they wink—
       water that feminine force that queens us all. 

If already water, what good will weeping 
       on your false logic of wetness do. 

Beneath the current, I see those long-fingered fates 
       stretching upward; another touch unwanted.  

Horrorshow

Haunted by your own exceptionalism you prepare 
another sacrifice to yourself—it’s not the size 

of offering at stake but its scope, like how the difference
between ornamental cabbage and rent-week cabbage 

is one of hot water. I, too, know how to preen 
without adornment: straight gaze, chin up, tongue

the afternoon light just enough to ripple it.
It’s a matter of position, not praise. Turning back

to my own icon, I catalogue the negative space
of my imperfections on her face. Now smoother.

Now saintlier. I tried to speak, once—converge
between mirror and mistress. One, then the other.

Sentenced to endure one’s own curated self. 
I was my own consequence, am jury and executioner.

Dissolution Method

I have never sleepwalked. 
I have bathed in black water. 
I felt a spiderousness beneath
and in each birthing silence the surface
grew wider. Outside, I’m sure, kudzu creeps,

unkempt. I have kept an appearance of swelling
only in private. What doors open in sleep,
to what further. Under the water,
a remembering. When my hand
moved inside of you

it calloused. The thing of you, 
I mean—quiver turned panic 
button, plastic and its unbreathing. 
The door shaped you, put that gasping 
in a frame. Before meat is hung for curing, first the flesh 

must be boxed for months. Salt and salted. Opening 
into that room, the hocks all kneed in a prayer 
too late. I have bent. Being splayed
these fingers forget the trick
of picking a lock. Dark 

water, devil’s work. Though 
many-eyed, spiders do not sleep. 
Suspension of sullen disbelief in weaving
air to arraignment. I have tempted entrapment 
with my own rotting fate—the mold at the heart of a stone 

fruit’s remembered scent. Arbitrary to decry warp or weft 
in the face of sleep’s oblivion. I have slept in the wrong 
pits: weeks later chaffed by the thread of alien 
sweat in my own. In hanging, 
a meat is cured. Smells 

unnameable, new. You
found black mold in the doorway,
as if it had been waiting for you. Fingernails,
almond-filed, scraping the jamb in pleasured disgust.
You came inside, again. Here—steep your hands in dimming wet.

Tags: caroline crew, sarah waddle