How to Create Ghosts by Seth Copeland | ISSUE TWENTY ONE: Smaller, Yes, ty

How to Create Ghosts

Seth Copeland

First grind something
            corn your teeth

Melt wax hair
            over a calf skull

Cross three whiskers
            burn them together

Flip drunk through phone
            see a name & hit the earth

Smile at scowling boys
            in photos of now dead

Try instead a golem
            w/ less triple sec

Blow ash spark into
            an old man’s face

Sink shoes to pond bottoms
            spit on a shroud

Start a chicken franchise
            breed life never light seen

Say the name of your dead
            You know who say

Seth Copeland is the founding editor of petrichor. His work has recently appeared or is forthcoming in Yes Poetry, Random Sample, Kestrel, SOFTBLOW, Permafrost, and The Birds We Piled Loosely. He teaches in the Oklahoma City metro.

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