Issue 09
creative nonfiction
“Implications of Ghosts”
by Kimberly Ramos
“Who Wields the Feather” by Chanlee Luu
Official Definition being gauze body and silk breath. As in, the girl that trails behind me when I enter a room. As in, serial desirer, the mirror that outweighs the mass of me. As in, flourish of herons, gold leaf, oriental dreams. As in, the body delineated by absence, what moves around it, the chair that skitters forward, the lights that go out, the static that bursts through the TV screen. You summoned me: now face the consequences.
According to a Catholic Upbringing the hungry ghost is only a half-step above the demon. As in, my wanting is what makes me wicked. Ghosts get bound to earth when they want more than what they’re given, as in, harboring grudges. Anchored to the in-between because they can’t let go, because their stomachs are empty and immaterial, because they can no longer hold gold coins or love or razor blades. Fine, I’m spiteful to have been separated from my body.
Ghost in the Shell being the pleasure-machine now empty, wires unwinding from my ears, one eye dislodged and hanging. Rusted joints, unsexy creaking. Moan-motors silent. Low battery: need the shock of touch to start me up. I understand what I am by the way in which I am used: cheap grease, new cuisine, girl facsimile. Here’s your order. Weren’t you hungry?
What I Leave Behind being my means of survival: bobby pins in your bed, dark hair curling snakelike across your floorboards, the lingering presence beside your left ear. Calling cards: the cat yowling outside, the smell of garlic and grease, things in sets of threes. Do you know what you did? What a ghost will let you do in order to make a deal?
Rules of Haunting being that once you welcome a ghost into your home, she is allowed to live there. As in, where her body is buried is now her resting place. She likes to throw things: old books, glass plates, anything filled with water. She likes to reach out of mirrors to stain your shirt, wet your pants, cross your eyes. Curse girl, nuisance that cannot be exorcized. Eater of light. The pit you kissed, then spit in. A demon craving self-possession. Done with teaching lessons.
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Kimberly Ramos is a queer Filipina writer from Missouri, though they currently reside in Providence, Rhode Island, as a graduate student of philosophy at Brown University. They serve as the Managing Editor of CLASH!, an Imprint of Mouthfeel Press. Their debut chapbook of poetry and mixed genre is set for publication with Unsolicited Press in 2023. They are prone to burning things, both accidentally and on purpose.
Chanlee Luu is a Vietnamese-Chinese American writer and photographer from southern Virginia currently working toward an MFA in creative writing at Hollins University. She received her BS in chemical engineering from the University of Virginia. She writes about identity, pop culture, science, politics, and everything in between. She can be found on Twitter at @ChanleeLuu, and her work can be found in Free the Verse, Snowflake Magazine, the gamut mag, Cutbow Quarterly, & Tint Journal.