Donna Reis

Thursday, October 29th, 2009 @ 7:00
A Haunting Reading of Ghost Stories
from “Seeking Ghosts in the Warwick Valley”
GVG Creations
3 Winkler Place
Chester, NY 10918
(845) 469 - 6683

Tom’s Bands

The Man-Childs, The Wormwood Scrubs,
The Counts, Pure Space, The Happy Fish
and Chicken Band, The Man-Childs II, Blue
Goose, Quarry Road, Larry and the Shoes,
The Rockabilly Shufflers, Cabin Fever, The
Secrets, Katie and The Meadow Muffins,
Gramolini, Angel Train, The Blue Hill
Kickers, The Sourmash Boys, Somebody’s
Sister, Armadillo, Celtic Clan, Sunday’s
Well, Inchicore, The Dublin City Ramblers,
The Luck of the Draw, The Urban Legends,
The Unreliable Narrators, Mister Cranky.

Donna Reis

Last night I dreamt I went to Manderley again.
… for a while I could not enter, for the way was
barred to me. ~Daphne DuMaurier

Your dead aunt’s chimney stands
like a blacksmith’s forge as you crest
the drive, your home surrounded
by a cemetery of stone foundations,
tumbling tenant houses and trees as old
as fairy tales about to topple. A staircase
rises to the brambled sky. Your grandfather’s
mansion turned hotel now lies charred
from a jilted piano player
who murdered his lover,
then shot himself in a sea of blinking
ancestors. There are dead horses in the
paddock, remnants of the pool,
tennis courts and gardens even the deer
have long forgotten. Taxes that would kill
anyone, parched water pipes that clang,
“Go away.” Crazy Kate in the gardener’s
cottage forever building walls,
flying her blue blooded flag
like a keep-out sign, hoarding
matches, storing cans of gasoline.

-Donna Reis