Size / / /

Who was it that said human

beings never conceptualized

the notion of ghosts

until the first house with two

rooms was built? Freud?

Jung? I no longer remember.

And I'm skeptical of the theory

in general since all manner

of quasi-spooky threats

must have stalked, if not

the twilit bosks of Eden, with

its glib serpents and winged

shadows, then the savannahs

and caves of early Homo diasporus

especially at night. All it took

was imagination to flesh them

out and then collectively,

at the root-meme level, store them

for easy retrieval in some sulcus

of the tribal id.

Hormonally, I bet, it's this

constellation of neurons

that fires up in the crepuscular

murk of the back brain

whenever a strange noise

or glimmer manifests,

transmogrifying vague or inchoate

menace into a universal

Who goes there?

But no one goes there: it's just

neural chatter, the ghost meme,

ancestral shadows or footfalls

in the hallways of the brain.

Ergo, my rejection of the second

room theory—not that I've any plans

soon of giving up my single-room

apartment.




Robert Borski works for a consortium of elves repairing shoes in Stevens Point, Wisconsin. You can read more of his work in our archives.
Current Issue
4 Nov 2024

“Did you know,” the witch says, “that a witch has no heart of her own?”
Outsiders, Off-worlders {how quickly one carves out a corner of the cosmos, / claims a singular celestial body as [o u r s] in the scope of infinity}
Lunar enby folks across here
Wednesday: The 2024 Ignyte Award for Best Novel Shortlist, Part Two 
Friday: A Place Between Waking and Forgetting by Eugen Bacon 
Issue 28 Oct 2024
Issue 21 Oct 2024
By: KT Bryski
Podcast read by: Devin Martin
Issue 14 Oct 2024
Issue 7 Oct 2024
By: Christopher Blake
Podcast read by: Emmie Christie
Issue 30 Sep 2024
Issue 23 Sep 2024
By: LeeAnn Perry
Art by: nino
Issue 16 Sep 2024
Issue 9 Sep 2024
Issue 2 Sep 2024
Issue 26 Aug 2024
Load More