Capitol Ghosts: a poem by Alysse Aallyn

CAPITOL GHOSTS

Pale Guiteau
slants his disappointed child’s face
downwards; the better to study bloodstains left
by assassins more accomplished than himself
who required benefit of anonymous surgeons 
specially qualified for skewering
the muscles of the mighty.

The guard who saw him
claimed also to hear demon cats
and could not be relied upon.
these portents once were matters of
congressional dispute; now
no matter; caught within the marbled lurch
of history, victims

of the uninspired mad; 
those who pursue the corpse from whom
the ghost escaped. He haunts our history
like the villainous barber who sings as he slits
both throats and wombs, a pure tune
some say, picked clean of tragedy
which only the dying hear.