It had been forty years since
I’d seen her face to face. No
surprise, I couldn’t remember
how Julie made that planchette spider
from forks and a glass.
………………………….A plectrum for a spiritual oud,
she said.
Her ouija board: hand-drawn letters
strung around an oval on the paper.
When I called to ask her
how she made it,
she said:
………………………….What’s an oud?
………………………….That couldn’t have been me.
So now I can’t be sure some
ex nihilo spirit didn’t
strum this vivid
memory into my brain:
her cunning smile, the quirky messages,
and just how real, when I
surrendered, the
disembodied movement felt.
Frank Klaassen‘s poetry has appeared in numerous journals including The Malahat Review, Stand, Oxford Poetry, Canadian Literature, Arc Poetry Magazine, Grain, Columba, Plenitude, Five Points, and The Canadian Literary Review. His other publications include Making Magic in Elizabethan England and The Magic of Rogues (Penn State University Press).
