At the Launch of the Pinky Ardelle, 9 July 2011, Essex, MA

By j. scott sly

Huzzah, boys! The ship looks so grand,

standing amongst the marsh in Essex town.

The repeated ‘thud’ of the hammer blows,

knocks the  blocks from her landed mooring.

She rocks and sways, and eventually she slides,

in a moment of violence,

with speed and near disaster she is born.

Birthed from tradition,

Ardelle dips her hull for the first time. 

Haunted House

Haunted House

by j. scott sly

The trick to escaping is to not look to the left. To right is the door, but to the left is the room where she hides. I move quickly to the right, towards the door. Is he is in his study? This is where he hides from her. No.It is early. The think summer air is still and thick. Kept awake through most of the night with loud thuds and raised voices it is going to be one of those days where I am living inside my eyes. My body is an ambling machine;  unaware. I creep out of the guest room where I am now made to stay, and down the grand staircase. Half-way down the stairs hangs a giant mirror, which gives the full view of the body, unflattering and unwavering.

I open the door into the bright summer morning and smell the warm grass of the neighbourhood road’s median. As I walk towards the short brick staircase, I stop just short of a spider’s web. In the centre, eight-legs keep still, unbothered by me. I crouch beneath the web taking stands with me in my hair. It is humid. I look back at the brick facade that, despite all my years spent there, has never felt like home. Most of my friends have been there. I have been in love there. Yet, nothing; plaster, wood, and brick.

The family that lives there now are ghosts. Each room has it’s own ghost. Father’s lives in the study. This ghost loves celebrity gossip and pornography. Brother’s ghost lives in the basement. These ghosts hide day and night from the most fearsome ghost of the house. Mother’s ghost uses up everything. Crippling and consuming her ghost takes shape in the centre and pushes all aside. The house is left a husk, with nothing existing inside.

I sit on the guardrail in front of what used to be National Geographic headquarters where I used to hide and sneak cigarettes. What’s haunting? I worry about the ghosts in the house. I worry about Father ghost’s health and I worry about Brother ghost and the years that mother ghost has stolen from him. I worry about Wife ghost; the newest spectre. I do not worry about mother ghost. Mother ghost simply adds more evidence to a mystery that has already been solved.

I think of all the moments when we were happy; before the haunting. Sneaked laughter despite the chaos. I walk up the steps still focused on these thoughts. I walk straight through the spider’s web. I feel the angry spider on my skin. I want nothing more than to wash the spider away.