There’s a guy in the next town over
who fills his lawn with death:
40-foot skeletons, fake gravestones,
a grim reaper wielding a scythe
(it’s a bit much).
But when I turn away, I see 
the house across the street:
purple mums on the front porch,
Welcome wreath on the door,
and, flapping in the sunshine,
stars and stripes, sandwiched 
between two Confederate flags.
I am not afraid of ghosts; 
it’s the living who haunt me.

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