From the collection Writing Notebook 2021, published in 2022.
With What Excited Anticipation
Paranormal investigators arriving
soon
to look into the strange atmosphere
in this house
that poses itself
skeptical of examination
and will token resist
but in the end
it’s all a lot of posturing
It can’t help itself and
I predict a lot of showing off
once things get started
Purple sheets on the queen-size bed
shorting out the lights
A clutch of tiny yellow worms
in the laundry room
fast asleep and glowing
A flicker of my ticker when I finger
any downstairs doorknob
and there is
the vain mirror I’ve had to hang in the hall
so that it gets enough attention
to keep it quiet. Though
what a singing voice it has.
All our guests like it.
I can’t wait. Are the snacks ready?
Remember when your mother
caught the levitating cookie plate
at her card party?
Quick
I think I hear the doorbell – and you know
In this house you always have to ask:
Who –
or is it What –
is ringing it?
3/18/21
Claudia McGill Writes Poetry, Did You Know That? 
Oh, I love this! I hope it’s true.
I wish my house would be like this, it would be so friendly. But no, it’s just quiet here. !!!
Better quiet than un-friendly ghosts though.
It’s fun to read these after first encountering them in your book. I love the singing mirror. (K)
Thank you. I like the world I have portrayed in this poem. Everything is alive.
It’s been well used.
I absolutely love the idea of this mischievous, haunted house not being able to resist the opportunity to showboat for visitors.
If you’ve got it, flaunt it!
Ah! The mirror that craves attention! I love this one!!
Thank you. I feel quite often the world is haunted, as we might say, but really, it’s that everything has its own spirit and sometimes the disguise slips and we catch a bit of the world of a mirror, say…