My daughter wants to talk


about ghosts and I tell her

they aren’t real, just a way for people

to scare themselves into behaving properly—

but what is properly and why should we care?

and how it all goes back to Adam and Eve

how wanting

to know is the bad thing

and a ghost scares you back into your place

of ignorance and once

on jury duty I heard the victim talk

about keeping her ghosts close

although she was in the hospital so long

she nearly became a ghost herself

and my daughter

is talking about turning into a ghost

with a sheet and scissors

or maybe tulle and some glitter

and where to put the candy if a ghost has no pockets?

knowledge has its own pockets, I say




Eavesdropping

 

A woman’s voice rises above the sun

calling to God, and she sounds disgusted.

The music from her iPhone changes to a romantic

big band smoosh, and I’m someone’s darling now.


I remember this beach so vividly,

the sand all over my legs, gulls cawing

and you saying “I’m with you.”


We held hands and stared at scuffling fronds

of pine. Sea air crystallized on our skin.

Trumpets swung in the background, and you

thrilled me when you talked about the future.


This is not a place for poets, except

for eavesdroppers like me, thieving,

weighing all words equally, dispassionately.

These Monterey cypress trees are so twisted

and torn; I imagine their tendons

screaming in fierce wind.


My throat freezes as I gasp in the salt air.

We couldn’t have been so separated.

Shouldn’t. Crooning music pulls me to sleep,

and only my thirst keeps me alert.

Copyright © 2025 Otis Nebula Press. All rights reserved.

Siân Killingsworth is the author of Hiraeth (Longship Press, 2024). She has been published in Columbia Poetry Review, Roi Fainéant Press, Stonecoast Review, Glass: A Journal of Poetry (Poets Resist), and elsewhere, including When There Are Nine, a Ruth Bader Ginsburg tribute anthology. Siân is the Social Media Manager for the Rise Up Review. She holds an MFA from The New School.