Last week I slept in an old B&B,
\nVictorian, Midwestern, built to convey
\nHigh respectability: a house for
\nA father of its foursquare, limestone town.
\nNow it wears a bohemian skrim,
\nOffering brownies and soy granola.
\nThere is said to be a ghost. I don\u2019t know
\nWhat kind. Scuttling waif in long nightdress?
\nGuilt-wracked hypocritical reverend?
\nAs I lay in the high, four-poster bed
\nMarking midnight on the digital clock,
\nWatching LEDs blink from my cell phone,
\nThe laptop, and the TV\u2019s complex box,
\nTo the sound of cars and central A\/C,
\nI compared this ghost to an endangered bird,
\nHer nesting woods cut to shreds by strip malls,
\nOffice parks, and the Interstate, cheeping
\nForlornly for a mate. In the sober
\nMorning light, the lacy lampshade over
\nThe candle-shaped 40-watt GE bulb
\nBegan to rock inexplicably.
\nI thought: Have you now been reduced to this?
\nIn your own house? Is this what \u201chaunting\u201d means
\nFor you? Trying to catch a stranger\u2019s eye
\nFor an instant as he starts his cluttered day,
\nJust to say that once you were living too?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Last week I slept in an old B&B, Victorian, Midwestern, built to convey High respectability: a house for A father of its foursquare, limestone town. Now it wears a bohemian skrim, Offering brownies and soy granola. There is said to be a ghost. I don\u2019t know What kind. Scuttling waif in long nightdress? Guilt-wracked hypocritical […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9853","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-verse-and-worse"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9853","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=9853"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9853\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9889,"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9853\/revisions\/9889"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9853"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9853"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9853"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}