They Watch You

Polished contours mark white screens and we become but so many ghosts. Ghost tales give weight, sense, to what we feel. It is more of a comfort to say, “We can’t sleep because of banshees” than that we can’t sleep in this cold that newspaper layers fail to snuff out.

Wiry hairs in each highway urinal, farmers huddle roadside each night, cell-less with gas-station cherry pies. We tug each horizon that will have us, each that will choose how to structure each tender contradiction and make no song—not one—square a wary note.

- M. A. Istvan Jr.