disorder reigns

3

Sometimes I miss my house of ghosts. The way it crouched on Monterey Street in New Orleans as if it were falling back into the earth. The way the ghosts sang like they were trying to loosen the roots of my teeth. Individual slices of cheese eaten in succession. Dipping my fingers into the maraschino cherry jar while I wondered what was growing in the sheds outside. Crying because I missed my girlfriend (who still lived a state away) and wondering if the ghosts missed her too. A before-sleep ritual that involved turning lights off in a particular order and making sure the right corner of the bed was turned down before I tried to climb in. Keeping those blankets clean even as the rest of my laundry piled up in the corner. OCD can feel like a haunting, a wax-pale hand on your back applying insistent pressure so you do what it wants. I find myself pulling back the shower curtain to check for what—a pile of ash, a strand of hair, a baby bird spitting blood into the drain? I do this four times in the same night. Do I really believe in spirits or do my compulsions just need an outlet? I only know the first night we slept in the house on Monterey Street, my girlfriend and I dreamed the ghosts had given me permission to live there. And it’s true there were sounds in the night like someone opening a tuna can over and over, like thin voices singing non-words. Our new place in Seventh Ward feels so “uninhabited” in comparison. Now I only burn those dust-pink protection candles because I like the way they smell. Every time I’m in the French Quarter, I notice professional-looking signs advertising vacant apartments as “Haunted” or not. The longer I live here, the less this designation seems like a joke.

Jennifer Hanks is the author of two poetry chapbooks, Prophet Fever (Hyacinth Girl Press) and The Unsteady Planet (Instar Books), a collaboration with illustrator Julie Herndon, both forthcoming in 2016. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in places such as PANK, Arcadia, Autostraddle, Ghost Ocean Magazine, and Menacing Hedge. She was awarded a 2015 summer residency at Sundress Academy for the Arts in Knoxville, TN. Follow her at @corsetofscales and http://azura09.tumblr.com/

For more work by Jennifer Hanks, visit her page on our Online Sundries site.