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On First

Could think of it as
the pen's reluctance
to get that close to the paper, this
vaudvillean difficulty:

Someone mumbles as
a token, a cough
to let the comedians know the audience
lives:  try harder

to sell the punch line as
the house, the back row,
Costello, your costume, all those movie posters
dissolve, dissolve:

Someone could think of it as
if reciting facts
directly from the autobiography
of the ghost