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At the bachelor party, we're pedaling one of those “brew bikes,” the ones where you’re about a quarter of a spin class all glued together but instructorless and weaving circles around city limits, the ones where you can BYO whatever if you're a little cheap (we are) and they drop you at all your least favorite bars after the pregame/drive/ride, the ones where there's that grey area where you must float above city limits on that third axis they didn't anticipate when they built the public intoxication codes, or the city, you know there used to be a city under this one, you know what they call Old Sacramento is actually New Sacramento, and they have a whole system of tunnels from Old Old when that flooded over and they just built right on top of the old semi-intact city, buried alive, a bloated corpse landlord special’d into unintentional preservation, wings pinned under glass, late-October tunnel tours that people in New Old sell to people from New New for less than the price of a burger and fries–unless you buy your burgers and fries in the New New New, where everywhere has the same neon sign and astroturfed wall and coos of I think this place is just so cute and the drinks have boozy in the name because it’s a place you go to have your hand held uninterrupted, even if you can’t see the other guy, the owner of the place, the owner of the hand, and it’s all veneer and no decay, those suburbs that stretch out past the rail systems–when I smoke I ask do you think all ghost stories think they're just regular stories, and when I sober up I realize there are no stories that aren't ghost stories, and anything you can't take the train to is a bust, a Winchester mystery house with doors to nowhere, with pointless staircases, you know when my dad lost his finger they offered to sew it back on even though it wouldn’t work again, you know he said just keep it, you know the difference between a delta and an estuary is that a delta meanders and an estuary means business, and they say it’s boys only but I am the grey area, the floating above, the old new old school, the phantom limb, the water and the wreckage, the thing walking in circles across the ceiling to get to you, the oldest and tallest cake in the world, the hot ghost jumping out of it and the ticket to see it, the girl-tunnel-thing buried underneath you.
lucid
the prospect of transformation–
or lack thereof–i’ll guzzle it even
though i know i can’t absorb it,
can’t ever quench myself
with what i’m made of. i’ll meet you
at the photo lab where they
show you all the things you
can’t take with, just pass by
the pool you'd lie beside to bake,
hope you'd fry yourself
and be born anew,
the meadow, six hours north,
where the cows felt like a dream
so overcast it felt like a secret,
all of it, gummy bears soaking in vodka,
first kiss bike racks,
molly behind the dairy queen,
acid in your garage,
hands all everywhere,
mess and sparks and mist and
clouds and chlorine and spit and
it felt like a dream, looking back
and they say you don’t dream of people you don’t know,
that we had to have seen each other
at the supermarket, park, on the train,
something, somewhere–
can, then, a face be many faces?
an amalgamation of many things
i do not know into one i do?
sure, you can’t just come up with a face,
but can you put one together?
i know you had to be something
before i knew you as a chimera,
and if you let me, i’d be
the best ghost ever for you
i am you and you are me and i am
the disembodied, ectomied heart bouncing around, and
when i was younger, i was so fixated
on this idea of the in-betweens,
of how to go into another state
and bring with you
what you have in this one–
if i held onto you tight enough,
if i drank the right tea,
if i had enough pisces placements
if i could just pick up my negatives–
it was this same life,
but you could've fooled me.
Romy Rhoads Ewing writes from Sacramento, California, born and raised. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in HAD, Oyez Review, Rejection Letters, Bullshit Lit, Major 7th Magazine, and more. She is the author of please stay (Bottlecap Press, 2024) and also edits poetry and nonfiction for JAKE. She runs the archival site SACRAMENTO DIRTBAG ARCHIVES and can be found at romyrhoadsewing.xyz.
published May 22, 2025