Louis Stettner, Broken Light Bulbs, 1971 (Website)
Black and white photography, 31 x 20.7 cm
©The Estate of Louis Stettner, 2019
Sometimes the ghost appeasement spell
works like this: your mother locks the door
for the last time. She’s glad, she says,
the bank took the house. It was too
big to clean with her bad ankles.
The radio kept coming on at midnight.
The candles went out of their own accord.
And that river! By stovepipe or basement wall,
it got in—long-legged, stealthy, breathing
at keyholes, loping and fingering the knob
of the closet where the guns were kept.
At the foot of the stairs, it wept.
Gather 10 years of a bad mortgage,
ash and bone chips in a plain brown box, and the last day
you’ll cross the bridge together, drown them in the fishing spot.
You leave a beeswax votive
lit on the flat rock, and wade back through
the water—that river!—headrush, gibberish, home-no-more, memory
of the night you woke in the ectoplasm
of some hurricane, and followed the moonlight down
to the front door thrown open, glass and dogwood petals
strewn across the rug, like someone has just returned
from a long trip, desperate to tell the whole story.