reek of ghosts

This is a continuation of my current experiment, rewriting Anne Rice’s The Witching Hour as poetry. This poem is from Page 7 of the Knopf First Edition hardback.

Let me tell you a little secret:
No one around here is fool enough to come.

How easy to
forget oneself out in
dull heat, where
children once played yet
now a black corpse,
reek of ghosts. Lasher carved
into the hour
whose eyes circle uneasily in
impossible white.

Feet on the bare floor,
blue and listless,
a silver line of saliva
down the side of a mouth.
Making a circle, the sun
streaked with silent laughter.
Things not exactly right.