Since You Ghosted*

2017 Merit Award
By Darian Karuza

The sun is a mosquito zapper
sizzling on the veranda,
calving Earth’s shadow
over a lawn of dewy comets.
I am the chrysalis duskywing
ascending latticework to its warmth.

I passed your cross
on the shoulder of the parkway
the other day. It sent crushed ice
sliding down my spine. Who
was Caroline? I can barely remember.

Maybe, what we call a phantom
is just someone’s fiery iron
mass now cast
as a cool brown dwarf,
a shade of human heat,
calfprints in memory
foam,
                    gravity wells
of a supergone black hole,
an unthawable head cold.

. . . . .
*Copyright 2017 by Darian Karuza. Broadside illustrated by Mat Hudson.