Carol Willette Bachofner

Half-Haunted

Old Pima came down with the wandering sickness. It edged in when he was digging for water out back. Took over, settled into his heart for four years. There is no warning. It stayed until Grandson came home from college. Ira Hayes got it at Iwo Jima, raising a flag that didn’t recognize him. That’s how it gets in sometimes. Comes and goes. Old Pima put a walking stick by the entrance to his house. In case it comes back. He wears a dream catcher on his shirt now. He heard from an elder that the sickness comes from crazy dreams getting in through the chest. He hasn’t slept in his bed since Old Woman walked away. Grandson builds a fence to keep it out. Granddaughter cooks outside to make it think there’s no house at all. Old Pima smudges. Heya, heya, heya-hey. Linda Little Dog stopped singing and wandered off after breakfast. She might be gone an hour. A week. She might be under the road. Old Pima notices his walking stick wandered off at about the same time.

Carol Willette Bachofner served as Poet Laureate of Rockland, Maine from 2012 to 2016. Carol is the author of seven books of poetry, including Test Pattern, a fantod of prose poems (Finishing Line Press, 2018). Every Place I look, Women With Embers at Their Feet is forthcoming from Main Street Rag. Bachofner’s poems have appeared in numerous journals, most recently, The Mackinaw: a journal of prose poetry, and the following anthologies: Dawnland Voices, An Anthology of Writings from Indigenous New England (University of Nebraska Press, 2013), Enough! (Littoral Books, 2020), and Wait (Littoral Books, 2021).