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This work is licensed
under a Creative Commons
Attribution-NonCommercial
4.0 International License.

Postmodern Village
est. 1999
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Do Not Touch Casket--Electric Shock
by Francine DuBois

for johnny knoxville and chris "bunny" pontius,
who would have touched it

faded grey with green borders,
the wartime book on timidity
leans on my bookshelf next
to a collection of ghost stories,
and I want so desperately to
read something meaningful
into this coincidence, to say
that ghosts only visit the timid.

the timid don't climb trees,
the timid don't touch things
in the museum, and the timid
instead get visited by spirits
in dreams, letting their memories
be not of intense physical pain,
but of calmness and retelling the
dream over and over during lunch.

but the timid are haunted by
the ghost of regrets, and they
never are given a final answer
to questions like "was it really
electrified, or was he just lying?"
so they wander through the purgatory
of missouri, lonely spirits with
unanswered questions.

 

Francine's Version -- Hezekiah's Version -- Inspiration
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