By Summoning Its Ghosts

An anthropologist warns

That it won’t do to challenge

The Colonial Era’s

Legacy by summoning

Its ghosts. In that, you might catch

Faint echoes of Audre Lorde.

Ideological ghosts

Are, more or less, all the ghosts,

Ghosts being ideas of ghosts,

And yes, there’s an undertow

In the current from the past

Ideological ghosts.

Exorcism is tricky,

Given that ideas never

Lived or died to begin with,

Not exactly. They compete,

And they only go extinct

When no one’s left who thinks them,

And even then they might pop

Out the tomb of a text

Buried several thousand years.

To mention is to summon,

And so long as brains don’t change

From being haunted houses,

There’s always a chance for ghosts

To take up fresh residence

If the host’s not crammed with ghosts.