Ramshackle Review

Ghost Dance
by Stephen Hastings-King

Outside the lattice of snow suspended in the air comes with traces of the glitter that was in her hair.

As the sound curls up and pulls away, the image widens onto other people slow line dancing amongst cans of beer and food in tinfoil bins hardening over Sterno.



From the side a voice says:  When I looked into the sun a voice said: ‘Tell them to do the old line dances.'

The voice breaks up the transform that had by then connected memory traces of glitter to drawing imaginary symbols between her legs.



He wears a bowler hat.  He turns and says:

These people think they and their world are things.  So for them to pass away is to disappear.  But they are their worlds are not just things.  Every continuation is a passing away.

While he speaks his eyes are bicycle wheels then kaleidoscopes of yellow green and black.

When he pauses, one eye is a moving spiral and the other a mirror in which you see yourself peek around the far end of a movie camera.



As he turns away he says: The secret is that there is no secret. 

When he turns away his face disappears beneath the bowler. 

And you turn along with him to watch a silent ghost dance performed by people wearing cowboy boots and tight jeans.  They form into a circle, their movements synchronized and low to the ground. 






Stephen Hastings-King lives by a salt marsh in Essex, Massachusetts where he makes constraints, works with prepared piano and writes entertainments of various kinds. Some of his sound work is available at www.clairaudient.org. His short fictions have appeared in Sleepingfish, Black Warrior Review, elimae, Metazen, Fwriction: Review and elsewhere.