TWO POEMS
Portrait of America as a Friday the 13th Flashlight Tour of the Winchester Mystery House
And it’s down another corridor—,the guide telling us again. —weaving our wayto the ballroom that inspired Disney’s Haunted Mansionwith its parquet floor & ivy-laced words scrollingcustom stained glass: Some believe, we learn, she used this space to mourn& atone for her family’s guns while others thinkat each full moon she’d strike a chime & summon spiritsfor a midnight feast. To complete the gag,all we needed was a cued rimshot——piped inabove the sounds of rain & thunder playing throughoutthe house on refrain. Then it’s once again & we’re off to the next room. the brochure asked,although a safe bet would be more bad puns, horror tropes,history that doesn’t add up. We’ve already wanderedthe gift shop waiting for our tour to begin, posedwith rifles for a keepsake photo in front of a green screenthat allowed us to appear in any room we chose.We’ve strolled the Hall of Fires,into the ceiling, seen the inch-deep cupboards made becausethe grief-stricken heiress was instructed by a psychic to moveWest, the guide told us, & build a house that needed to bekept under constant construction or else anyone killedby guns would seek revenge. Or something like that. Out ofremorse, fear, sidestepping blame, or some mishmashof it all, the hammers could never stop. We watch the beams of our souvenir flashlightsglide across ramshackle splendor & Tiffany windowsstreaked by the real storm outside, too embarrassed to admitwe all expected more for our $49. In the séance room—, with its false exits,barred windows, blue trim—we’re told Winchester wouldenter this space, lock the doors, & reach out to the dead,sometimes seeking forgiveness, sometimes askingwhat to build next. A dramatic pause, & then at lastthe ghost stories we’ve wanted to hear. One about a manroaming the hallways. A doorknob rattling. The soundof hammers, inexplicable bursts of light. And if in that moment none of us heardhow those tales of the dead echoed not the deadbut stories of shootings & those who survived—
