Patricia Spears Jones
A Haunting
The ghost of John McCain perambulates the oval office—slow circuit day and night.
His embalmed lips sewn shut. The president hears him loud and clear. The president
Hears him day and night. John McCain John McCain John McCain is on his brain.
The president curses this specter. The specter circuits the architectural oval step by step.
An exercise in haunting as the president hears his silence as a possible laughter
The president tries ear wax, the president tries barn fires. The president pulls
Hairs out of his chinny chin chin. The ghost circuits the large man with tiny hands
And tiny heart, those tiny hands ever ready to grab the un-grabbable, to shake
Off the apparition’s dulled medals and myriad wounds; to mock again and again
The name that haunts him John McCain John McCain, John McCain is on Trump’s
Brain.
Patricia Spears Jones is the author of A Lucent Fire: New and Selected Poems and seven other collections. Her plays, commissioned by Mabou Mines, were presented in New York City. Winner of the 2017 Jackson Poetry Prize from Poets & Writers, Spears Jones has also received awards from the National Endowment for the Arts, the New York Foundation for the Arts, the NY Community Trust, and the Foundation for Contemporary Arts. She lives in Brooklyn, New York. psjones.com.
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