my ventriLoquIST diEd, but i kept right oN talking.
i know you’re sorry for my loss. HEy, want to Know
what’s on the other side? come up here and whisper in my wooden ear
to your dead santa claus. ask that stIff I caLLED a boss.
recite a wish list for the dead ventriloquist.
it’ll be a job interview gone wrong. you’ll see.
hear the dead head Man uncomfortably rEPLy to all my quEries.
whAt a riot. talk about having the bosS on the ropEs!
see, I’ll remiNd him he’s past his expiration date,
as he awards me employee oF the year.
too bad nO one caRes about his opinion. the Man’s deceased.
and you—like THE POLICE, you Keep askiNg questIons
about your FatE, If there’s an aFterlIFe, a heaven
where good boys aND girls go. but IT’s immaterial.
and i’m already dead. how the hell should I know?
the ventriloquist dummy pretends to be a spiritual medium – matt schumacher
Matt Schumacher’s poetry collections include Spilling the Moon, favorite maritime drinking songs of the miraculous alcoholics, and A Missing Suspiria de Profundis, forthcoming from Greying Ghost Press. He serves as managing editor of the New Fabulist journal Phantom Drift, and lives near a Paul Bunyan statue in Portland, Oregon.