& Memphis is out in Full Fang! Skeletons skip down our pitted streets. Whole families with matching hobo stipple roam tragicomically through the sprawling candy deserts: polka-dot bandanas on sticks, flapping Chaplinesque shoes.
Unclaimed pumpkins pile high behind razor wire. The air's thick with caw & trouble. Our...
They’re gathering now cone-head ghouls Spider-Man fly-by-nighters’ burnt-cork cheeks flailed sheets and twiggy voices Mama stalking a border dog’s crescent around back around as if to fend off certain harm October’s second sodium moon basting the street and barbecue ribs and links she smoked all day to keep her four...
I saw this day coming class would end and it would be night time to attach bike lights tonight I lit my way with a cigarette I asked if petticoat ding a ling was a fun bar NO...
Our grandma kissed a pumpkin on a Friday afternoon. She also kissed a crayon and a giant red balloon. I saw her kiss a chipmunk eating cookies with a queen. She kissed us in these costumes at our house on Halloween!
Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary, Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore— While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping, As of some one gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door. “’Tis...
We’re having a Halloween party at school. I’m dressed up like Dracula. Man, I look cool! I dyed my hair black, and I cut off my bangs. I’m wearing a cape and some fake plastic fangs.
You knew I was coming for you, little one, when the kettle jumped into the fire. Towels flapped on the hooks, and the dog crept off, groaning, to the deepest part of the woods.
In the hackles of dry brush a thin laughter started up. Mother...
Double, double toil and trouble; Fire burn and caldron bubble. Fillet of a fenny snake, In the caldron boil and bake; Eye of newt and toe of frog, Wool of bat and tongue of dog, Adder's fork and blind-worm's sting, Lizard's leg and howlet's wing, For a charm...
That Halloween I wore your wedding dress, our children spooked & wouldn’t speak for days. I’d razored taut calves smooth, teased each blown tress, then—lipsticked, mascaraed, & self-amazed— shimmied like a starlet on the dance floor. I’d never felt so sensual before— Catholic schoolgirl & neighborhood...
Tonight I light the candles of my eyes in the lee And swing down this branch full of red leaves. Yellow moon, skull and spine of the hare, Arrow me to town on the neck of the air.
Even now this landscape is assembling. The hills darken. The oxen sleep in their blue yoke, the fields having been picked clean, the sheaves bound evenly and piled at the roadside among cinquefoil, as the toothed moon rises:
This is the barrenness of harvest or pestilence. And the wife...
The ghost is a torn sheet, the skeleton’s suit came from a rack in a store the witch is flameproof, but who knows what dark streets they have taken here? Brother Death, here is a candy bar. For the lady wearing the hat from Salem:...
Be perfect, make it otherwise. Yesterday is torn in shreds. Lightning’s thousand sulfur eyes Rip apart the breathing beds. Hear bones crack and pulverize. Doom creeps in on rubber treads. Countless overwrought housewives, Minds unraveling like threads, Try lipstick shades to tranquilize Fears of age and general dreads. Sit tight,...
By a route obscure and lonely, Haunted by ill angels only, Where an Eidolon, named NIGHT, On a black throne reigns upright, I have reached these lands but newly From an ultimate dim Thule— From a wild weird clime that lieth, sublime, ...
I spot the hills With yellow balls in autumn. I light the prairie cornfields Orange and tawny gold clusters And I am called pumpkins. On the last of October When dusk is fallen Children join hands And circle round me Singing ghost songs And love to the harvest moon; I am...