ghost canto

^{for Bernadette Mayer}

a list appears in parentheses
w every line crossed 
out:                 what goes into
the poem?                 my cousin’s ex
husband asks
what a poet is—he’s
read dead ones before but
never met a real live one 
didn’t realize
it was a living art at all
didn’t I read something 
in the Atlantic magazine?
          in hell: 
the death of poetry 
as narrated by 
my cousin’s brooks
bros ex
nightmare
          in the morning
riv texts 
a video of zazi
riding his bimba
hot pink not quite trike  
singing “leaves & flowers
leaves & flowers” 
          i put down my phone
& look up to the poem
face it w curiosity patience &
care—
          what do you mean by
care? the chair of the 
search committee asks,
when you say “care-
oriented pedagogy”
           as if to say: 
am I my brother’s
keeper? as if to say:       what is my 
responsibility?          what does 
          it matter in the end whether
we care or not or 
abt what?
it matters a whole fucking
lot—but you can’t say that
in the interview 
twist yr tongue into knots
as zuk’s coleridge’s shylock:
engprof, thou doth protest 
too much
          in the poem
          the gates open at the
same moment they close
a spell gets thru
not curse but 
apotropaic chant
warding off the evil eye
           when i heard  
bernadette had died
i texted my amish gazebos
abroad group chat: “thinking of how
lucky we are to be poets”
if poetry is finally
a means
& seam
at dbl eternity
in reverse faustian pact
“just freaks being freaks” 
          if there’s no original 
language & we are 
all mediums of
the dead 
          bernadette was alive
when i started
this poem, a poet among ghosts 
now ghost among poems
what bill berkson calls “duration”
the translations of her life she made 
remain our permission
in second body 
mind aggregation 
language in/formation 
culled by the dead
for the living—the dead
who live among us
& the dead we all become

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“‘ghost canto’ is a poem from my new manuscript, ‘poems with friends & ghosts,’ and is dedicated to the late great Bernadette Mayer (1945–2022). I began writing this poem with Bernadette very much in mind several weeks before her death, thinking perhaps I would visit her in Upstate New York at her ‘Poetry State Forest’ sometime soon. Next I heard, she had passed from this earth, and the poem—which sat half-written in my notebook—shuddered between worlds, wriggled in a dream through wormhole’s wordy pocket: ‘bernadette was alive/ when I started/ this poem, a poet among ghosts,/ now ghost among poems.’”
—Ariel Resnikoff