"Responsorials" by Joe Weil and Emily Vogel (Pt.1)

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Ghost, 4th of July, 2013

I was never there—not reallyand if I was, I really wasn’t—I meanI may have been standingtherelike your Ma pretending to watch yougo up and down on the damned horsewith the pole through its asssaying: “I see you! Nice!”

But I was crying—deeply and oftenin some ditch they call home,gutted like a lamb at a cook outand you were moving at such a high rate of speedme too I was moving so fast and the paper plateswere burning and gone forth as ashes overthe whole of the city—to die in the night airto diein the nightair to die like that is why I camelike a child wanderingthrough the carnival not knowing theglasshas cut her to pieces.

Among Ghosts

They were among ghosts, over dinner, and the ghosts were also among them. The ghosts felt vaguely like waitresses. It was as though someone had once known the waitresses’ names, and had since moved on, the way that life often moves on. It was as though the new focus was on building offices. Building offices and hotels with hotel bars that glowed with fluorescent lights around dusk, all pink and green and blue. And there were also tanks full of fish, and the cocktails also glowed pink or green or blue. It was a new era and it smelled like money and the money also smelled like landfill. But nobody minded the stench, really. Sometimes, the people went to the seaside and pretended to talk to God. They believed that the sky looked promising. I was there, and some other people who had done some very transgressive things, but it was okay, because there was love, like an early dawn, deep in the core of their souls. And it expanded like light. Eventually, someone woke up from a dream at 3 am, thinking exclusively of a dinner plate, a variation on certain themes of grief. And dinner plates were being tossed and spun around and around like a perfect spectacle of objects. It was a great ballet of objects. And all the people applauded, and nobody thought much about anything, such as casualties of war, or songs about getting drunk, or commercials about pretty shoes.

Emily and Joe live in upstate New York with their children Clare and Gabriel. “Responsorials” are excerpted from their collaborative book of poetry West of Home (Blast Press, 2013).