on mondays the ghouls come
right when the lanterns first erupt with light
from the flames of the aggrieved
who lay down to rest but writhe, unfulfilled.
the subdued mellowness of the midnight moon
casts its whitish rays on yesterday’s spotted tombstones. they scuffle into the city carrying pails
of acid and hope,
hoping to wash away the rotting stench
of years and decades, even centuries.
but they are greedy and try to lap up what is left
of their riches,
unknowing that memories escape
faster than quicksand through their ragged, patched pockets as if they have never been there beforehand.
the ghouls grovel over each other towards the laundromat until the lines stretch past the hotels
and cleave a clean passage towards the living.
on tuesdays the spirits arrive
called by the restaurants’ welcome bells clinking; the private dining room curtains sway
into the translucent bodies of the hungry.
they leave a sticky trail of want with stomachs
that touch their backs.
after gluttonizing the ready-to-go, boxed meals
of unrealized birthday wishes and cheap wedding vows, they melt into each other while scuffling
for an extra quarter thrown into the fountain,
thinking the extra twenty-four cents will make them more human even though pennies are in abundance;
the rusting copper blinks at the bottom of the reservoir. but still the spirits trickle away one by one,
becoming dejected bubbles of food halfway to digestion floating through the alleyways.
on wednesdays the corpse brides reconvene;
they infiltrate the town through the back door,
careful to protected their visage
from the red-eyed crows of midnight
who are always looking.
shielded by their veils, they erupt in chatter
about renouncing the reek of decayed affairs.
they are vain, desperate creatures
who think survival is a game of finding the best
s k i ncare
products, the ones in line with the times:
an ailing mother who finally discovers her frozen fawn nestled in a grave of dirt-swollen snow signals
a hydrating mask of springtime showers;
later, the sugar-gliders smuggle between spirals
of the yellow-green stems spilled from the crown of a tree. but they too cannot escape the summer fever,
so they depart
with an everlasting reminiscence of the weeping willow’s leafy tears. a morning dew is thus crafted,
flavored with the blistering of summer sun
and the possum fathers’ grieved goodbyes;
it is just thick enough to settle on peeling skin
and make you feel young again.
like this,
each change of a season brings every time
to the corpse brides a chance of being
loved again.
on thursdays the sirens visit,
their golden bangles recast from a sailor’s
parting gift into tickets that allow entrance to the gambling dens;
each ruby bauble cuddles their small wrists
like a brace that has somehow become
a mobius strip of the heart,
impossibly continuous and unable to be
unwound. one by one the gems are severed from their lodgings like snow peas being torn from their rinds,
exoliated from their peels until what’s left
over is only a heap of limbless membranes girded,
ready to be crocheted into roulette tables.
even the emerald trimmings are abandoned
as poker chips that suddenly
apparated onto the table.
so there goes a lifetime of feeling,
a receipt
given away so tattily and without thinking.
on fridays the town is quiet
because nobody comes and the guards clean up.
they sort the unceasing memories of the ghouls,
unrelenting in the wealth they promise but that have terribly become filth over time;
the steamy cauldron is stirred with a slight splattering of birthday letters from a first friend,
a few dashes of bygone,
oily photographs of watching with a mother
how the dark-eyed orchid blooms in april,
two clovers of the thrill of being swept up onto a father’s sturdy, powerful shoulders,
then nudging the edge of the sky
and wondering how atlas held it all up without
anybody else to hold it with him.
once the stew is finished boiling,
the guards march through the dry cleaner’s
and lick up their tips from the marble floor—
coins that missed the pay holes
and have settled comfortably in the crevices
of the barren years below them.
leaving their talismans to amuse themselves
with the unfriendly zephr outside,
they scurry into the cafes
to restock the cabinets with food
to keep the spirits only spirit:
a blackberry cake or a passionfruit wine
will always keep them coming for more.
then they scamper away,
face masks on, into the spas to replace the bottles of rice toner and honey moisturizers with
products that shine more opaque
under the northern stars.
thin tissue paper is issued to the drawers—
the guards know well; they know the brides will be thinking of what can be made a present while they get their nails painted with the world,
since nobody will count rows
upon rows of polish if they
can ponder somebody’s morning smile instead. after, the guards follow the clinks of bone
die to the casinos
just in time to see the pirates start
to gouge out the other eye or
wedge out a tooth’s silver plating
in trade of a bracelet lost its ribbons or,
if they’re lucky enough, a baby
tendril of sapphire.
throughout the week,
erosion grows many faces.
in its tallies of the days displaced,
it holds a bit of hopes of the ghouls
too wishful wishes of the spirits
some feeling of the corpse brides
and just enough song of the sirens.
Victoria Shen is a rising Senior at Riverdale Country School in the Bronx. She appreciates New York City as her home. She is a National Winner of the Scholastic Arts & Writing Awards and a 1st place winner of the Barbara Mandigo Kelly Peace Poetry Awards. Besides thinking of creative titles to inform her writing, she enjoys figure skating and playing classical piano.
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