Poem Analysis: Christopher Kennedy's Ghost in the Land of Skeletons

Ghost in the Land of Skeletons

Christopher Kennedy
If not for flesh's pretty paint, we're just a bunch of skeletons, working hard to deny the fact of bones. Teeth remind me that we die. That's why I never smile, except when looking at a picture of a ghost, captured by a camera lens, in a book about the paranormal. When someone takes a picture of a spirit, it gives me hope. I admire the ones who refuse to go away. Lovers scorned and criminals burned. I love the dead little girl who plays in her yard, a spectral game of hide and seek. It's the fact they don't know they're dead that appeals to me most. Like a man once said to me, Do you ever feel like you're a ghost? Sure, I answered, every day. He laughed at that and disappeared. All I could think was he beat me to it.

In Christopher Kennedy’s poem, “Ghost in the Land of Skeletons”, the poet describes his fear of death, and how he envies ghosts who still exist on the earthly plane. He states his fear in the line, “Teeth remind me that we die. That’s why I never smile…” It’s an extreme—the fact that he won’t even let himself be happy because it reminds him of the end is something incredibly sad and traumatic. The only time he says he smiles is when he’s looking a spirit captured in a photograph, since it gives him hope of the ones who refuse to go away. I think everyone can relate to this—the concept of hope for something in the afterlife, rather than the end being something terrifying.