WHISTLING SHADE

Fall - Winter 2015: The Horror Issue

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Upon the Ides, a Chill

by Patricia Faith Polak

O revenant, O umbra
Hekate's own from gauzy tracery about
	Forum's stones

Espy you, haunt you, the Cardo and the
	Decumanus?
Spectra...breath a shade whiter than the
	moon

Does the shambling Theatre of Pompey
	lure you to whisper within?
Ghostly player, rattle of bones, moaning

Unquiet company on no stage of life
And I at some indeterminate age—
	or this my bell's ringing?

Vapor entwining round the arcades
	of the tumbledown Porticus Pompeius
Spirit given history by Plutarch, by Pliny,
	in haunted house tales by Plautus,
	Lucan

Dead will not lie still until accorded right
	burial
Revenge stalks the phantasmal corridors

Wraith figure as Valeria Messalina
	Skeletal; insatiable; in chains

Descent of Greek pneuma
O spirit, O soul
	You roam restlessly within me