DONNY HATHAWAY’S GHOST IS IN MY ROOM
DAGMAWE BERHANU
Indentations / push the walls in and out of themselves / as I’m awakened to the portrait above my bed
frame birthing a man
He keeps hummin to himself / but it don’t sound like nothin to me/ just noise
I can’t make out / if he singin / or weepin / I can only say it all looks the same with sleepy eyes
The room is unmoved / The only evidence of him / is the ectoplasm / How it makes itself on the
walls / Leavin its trail / drippin everywhere
Homeboy lookin at my window like he know it
I reckon nostalgia is every man’s undoin
I ask him if he’d like to rest his head / He tells me he’s done a lot of that
Soul requires sacrifice / I’m doin most of the talkin / yet there’s nothin that can rip this strange
man’s eyes from the window’s face
Why he’s so entranced by heights I’ll never know
He tosses his cigarette and turns to me / The outlines of him reflectin off the moonlight / And in a
flicker / As if he couldn’t look any more translucent / He snaps his fingers / And my clock / starts to
tick backwards / The man is changin shape before me / I'm sayin the image of him is no longer
grainy and static / The glowing blue hue around him / brown and fresh /
I could tell you what year I think it is but it wouldn’t matter much
Stoic desert muck / Plenty of spirits in here to drink up a room
I begin wonder to myself / If his fate / is the fate of all poets
There is no art / quite like martyrdom / All blood is shed in a four count / Bitter stigmatic / I’m
sure there was a time it didn’t take all this / To prove you still have noise in you/ O' specter of the
fleetin night / O' beloved poltergeist / I know you bang your shackles to prove you can still make
music
Death is just a name in our mouths now / like any other
It swims awkwardly and swirls between the pinks of our teeth
It's nothin without a witness / and tonight there there ain't none
“I've got wings,” he says under his breath,
“but I don’t like lookin at em anymore”
He sees himself like tragedy
I see him like cinema
Next shot
a cracked man held by his shadow’s grip
Next shot
a choir of cherubs gawkin at a wild sky
Next shot
the void’s prince — scattered molecules of sand and air
He drags himself like a Newport towards the bed / dips his shy finger into the portrait and jumps
back into the frame
I’m left with nothin of the night / only the heat absence leaves in its wake
Above my bed frame, a faint voice I can hear in the walls, sayin
Take it from me
Take it from me
Take it from me
Dagmawe Berhanu is a Black, nonbinary writer from Columbus, Ohio. A child of Ethiopian refugees, much of their work centers on Black grief and memory across both geographical and emotional landscapes. A 2026 winner of the Bain-Swiggett Prize in Poetry, Dagmawe's writing has appeared in Black Warrior Review, The Tulane Review, like a field, Hooligan Magazine, among others. They currently reside in Ann Arbor, where they are an MFA candidate in Poetry at the University of Michigan's Helen Zell Writers' Program.