Your text is the ghost of a call
(I did not ring)
but since after all the message
yields up

        Caxton’s H
        a panel of ink starvation
        as seen in Gothic—‘gastly for to see’

the word is as much as breath
at three removes

        beyond the jurisdiction of veracity
        paling in a spectral line

nobody’s flicker, that screen double
who crosses your brain

        misread and so enshrined
        the train outside the table

darts fire, do you mind that mark
out of a cutting

        Vindicta’s special agent
        clangs a silent bell

plaze ax what’s the bother—
the blankets tossed about

        stealing, don’t you tell on me
        back to some fac simile

a tuft of ivy in place of the face
nodding

        quit-rent
        to feed the rollers

with even dirt   an island
stark from the press

        amarantus albus
        a cell deprived
        a white coal

for vault-age there’s this
demand

        OVER the over
        and stifling why

freaked into touch
to be passing honest

        your putative reader
        starts

when wages walk or another
writes my dispatches
I entertain the jest in the geist
and turn things to account