Sighted Unsaintly Saints






 Sighted Unsaintly Saints
 
 

Strange specters haunt my dreams and waking hours. 

Last night I dreamt I saw David Bowie.

 He was hiding, sitting hunched over

and brooding at a government box of orange juice

in a dreamscape high-school cafeteria.

 He had that Goblin King hair,

and was wearing a crushed velvet purple caplet.

 I touched his shoulder and he looked at me.

“Please come back. We need you!”

He smiled the slow, cat-like, enigmatic grin of the dreamed and the dead and replied,

 “I can’t. I was there with you while I was for a reason.”

 Dismayed, but not thwarted, I said,

 “Well, then, the next time around?”

 He nodded, his long, blond, perfectly-coiffed-rock-star hair bobbing, and seemed to laugh.

 “Next time around. Yes.”

It’s not the first time I’ve dreamed of a famous dead guy.

 I’d frequently conjure the ghost of Charles Bukowski,

at eighteen sipping red wine

and reading a volume of verse

borrowed from my punk rock cousin,

 sitting in an old green arm chair.

I followed his adventures down the bottle

 and in cheap apartments

like a quiet guardian angel

 with my halo slowly slipping,

or like a nosy neighbor

 with her ear against the thin and moldy wall,

or leaning out the window

to watch the old drunk stagger up the street,

pressing crumpled, battered hat

against his brow and lanky hair,

 face like a barnacled prow of a weathered ship,

 eyes that had endured the hell of the slaughterhouse

and the slow purgatory of the postman’s desperation. 

 After Hunter S. Thompson died,

for a week, I saw him everywhere on my community college campus.

By the trailer that housed the school paper

 where I published my first poem in print,

to the fountain where I sat in a short blue corduroy skirt

 and tried to look effortlessly cute

 while writing about ants,

to the elevator where I distinctly saw him walking an iguana on a leash,

 little stars like tiny suns orbiting his head,

some weird vision of my weird version of a saint,

though no saints these crude dudes living in my canon,

Thompson, Bukowski or Bowie.  

 
Chani Zwibel 
 

Chani Zwibel is a graduate of Agnes Scott College, a poet, wife and dog-mom who was born and raised in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, but now dwells in Marietta, Georgia. She enjoys writing poetry after nature walks and daydreaming.

Recent Publications include:

 Occulum Oct 2, 2017, Dissident Voice Sept 24, 2017, HorrorSleazeTrash August 26, 2017, The Song Is August 9, 2017, Clockwise Cat Thugwise Cat Issue 37 (June 2017),Sage Woman Worlds of Faerie Issue 91(April 2017), W.I.S.H (Walking Is Still Honest) Press March 10, 2017, Provoke Journal, January 2017

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