I have never been to Coney Island
yet the Ferris wheel in sepia-drenched
pictures, the greenish tint of old Polaroids,
the relics rendered in black and white
fills me with a past I will never know.
And yet it is mine, a ghost that speaks
my name as if I’d been there, haunted
by rides I never took, the fun I never had.
Michelle Brooks has published a collection of poetry, Make Yourself Small, (Backwaters Press), and a novella, Dead Girl, Live Boy, (Storylandia Press). A native Texan, she has spent much of her adult life in Detroit, her favorite city.
