Ghost Park
Ghost Park
The dog took off near the backhoe stuck in its rut
and I followed through tan brush,
watching his white shape zip up the mud path.
A plateau halfway up the city mountain:
an abandoned basketball court,
chain-link strangled by vines,
backboard standing indecisive above
a spread of soggy beer-cases, broken bottles, crinkled cans.
Of course, a used condom here and there.
A knock-off Weber grill that wasn’t rusted,
low-slung car seats for close talk,
an iron drum spraypainted Death to Hipster
Insurrectionists
(which only a hipster
insurrectionist would write).
We saw no animals besides ourselves
but heard birds chipping away
the remains of the afternoon sky,
and we were happy with our discovery,
happy with the water dribbling through a dubious pipe
from the top of the hill, where the real park was.
For five years, the dog lived in a dark house
with a sick man, starting whenever a sound from outside
came too near. He guarded but couldn’t stop
staggering falls, jerky spills from an unsteady hand.
In daytime, dark bourbon-y light through shut blinds.
I kicked a few beer cans across the worn pavement.
The dog feasted on the thaw’s reactivated scents.
Ellen McGrath Smith teaches at the University of Pittsburgh and in the Carlow University Madwomen in the Attic program. Her poetry has appeared in The Georgia Review, The New York Times, The American Poetry Review, Talking Writing, Los Angeles Review, and other journals and anthologies. Books include Scatter, Feed (Seven Kitchens 2014) and Nobody's Jackknife (West End Press 2015). Her chapbook Lie Low, Goaded Lamb was published in January 2023 by Seven Kitchens Press as part of its Keystone Series.
