Wandering shag-carpeted bathrooms
with accessibility rails,
I seek hardwood end tables.

My apartment, an Ikea showroom.
My woodgrain, a sticker
applied to wood chips and resin.

I’ll only own cedar drawers
jointed with dovetails, if somebody’s
grandpa gives up the ghost.

Haunt me with mid-century bookshelves.
Curse me with hand-painted Italian lamps.
More than anything, give me real ghosts.

I don’t believe in souls, yet I wish
for specters in second-hand objects.
I’d welcome an undead eternity,

anything but an end. If my essence
could be etched into my books
I’d happily haunt creation.

Give me ghosts because I plan
to die with unfinished business.
One lifetime is never enough.

Brendan Stephens is a writer and assistant professor at West Texas A&M University. His work has appeared in The Georgia Review, The Pinch, Epoch, the Southeast Review, The Hopkins Review, The Rumpus, and elsewhere. His awards include multiple Inprint Donald Barthelme awards, an Into the Void Fiction Prize, a Sequestrum Emerging Writer Award, and inclusion in Wigleaf’s Top 50 Very Short Fictions. Currently, he is the creative nonfiction editor for Aquifer: The Florida Review Online.

Next Page (Brendan Stephens)

Previous Page (