Ghost Ghazal

By Kate Northrop

Agree with me the rumble of a subway coming in
can be a baby, and the first note in the hush

of a concert hall, the bright name of a baby.
Walking to the bathroom at night, seeing

floorboards rise, this, of course, is a baby, and the sound
of pool balls breaking up pool balls? Like locks down the hall

clicking, one after another, into place? Baby, baby. Babies themselves
are not babies, not their carriages, their clinging

infant fingers, but that they often surface,
creaturely, into my dreams? Four horses gathered

in a window and then, on the counter, a sudden baby?
It’s true. Just this morning, walking with Nell, we saw a horse

standing in a pasture, flicking away flies. I clucked, clucked,
held out my hand and I called here, Baby.

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Kate Northrop's recent poetry collections are Homewrecker (New Letters vol. 88, 2022) and cuntstruck (C & R Press, 2017). Northrop teaches at the University of Wyoming. Currently she is learning to embroider.

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