Charis Morgan

Assistant Editor Kate Jayroe: Charis Morgan’s “Departing” strikes a tight tonal balance between place and horror. By working within and simultaneously surprising the narrative of the haunted house, Morgan’s poem conjures a darkly dazzling atmosphere.

Listen to Morgan read the poem:

Departing

Text:

At the end of forty years of marriage, the house is nearly empty.
Its face will fall last, like the final page of a book. The pipes leak
hours by the minute, and the back door opens onto an unlit
highway. The pine beams vault over red clay. The walls thicken,
closing over doorways. Both the bare steps and children’s
thumpings are absent. The house would have folded sooner, but
its clocks lost their hands. The house squats on Spring Hill’s bald
head, its face bricked up and six eyes rolled inward. Bedrooms
hinge into a broom closet. The house refuses to call itself haunted
or cursed. It covers a crypt, holding the dead who pretend
otherwise. None of the rooms know their places or names. Like
a child, the house has wet itself under the floorboards. Its eyes
have filmed over, and red ladies tear from invisible cracks. The house
hollows itself, losing flesh and memories. Unframed doors moan.
Its dead are expelled, one by one.

Charis Morgan is an MFA candidate at the University of Alabama and an assistant poetry editor for the Black Warrior Review from Rome, Georgia. Her work appears or is forthcoming in the Florida Review, Grain, Phi Kappa Phi Forum, and elsewhere. Find her at charismorgan.com and on Instagram @charisjmorgan.