Plot Device: Haunted House: Where a Window is a Scar
 
It should dwell on an island shaped
like the crescent moon, where elms grow
in clusters of three. The structure
is a masonry sonata, the story
of what goes in the box: file-thin wafers,
the scent of borax, a set of iron keys.
 
Ideally, it should be the home of someone who died
insane, threw a bound woman in the duckpond.
Imagine a kitchen where lemons are sliced
with a surgeon’s knife, a candy dish
of poisoned sweets. In the mirror,
you might catch a glimpse
of a man’s grizzled jawbone. You’d forgotten
how some places remind you of Pythagoras
and cherubs, tilting tables, button-eye hats.
 
A feeling of armlessness,
where something is always out of square.
Welling vapors in the doorway
are cold spectral hands, mossy green,
a tattoo beat that seems to originate from the cellar.
This might be explained as waves and frequencies,
a hidden mechanism, dry ice in the radiator.
 
Not so. Once, you were told that a needle
is the same as a ghost, that what you think
is dust will later be revealed as a monkey,
a black hen. You figure something should be hovering
above the sofa cushions. When the candle flames
burn at odd angles, you will find something dead.
You will be beating off flies to the sound
of someone whistling Anything Goes.
Or perhaps there is an alternate ending
where you find an antique dress,
discover you are a phantasm.

Susan Slaviero is the author of two poetry chapbooks: An Introduction to the Archetypes (Shadowbox Press 2008) and Apocrypha (Dancing Girl Press 2009). Her work has appeared in a number of  journals, including RHINO, Flyway, Fourteen Hills, Weave Magazine, Caffeine Destiny, and Arsenic Lobster. She designs and edits the online literary journal blossombones.