by Tricia Knoll
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Halloween scares her. That surprises me—
she is sixty, sexy and beautiful. Would make
a glamorous witch. Barbie’s mother.
Perhaps it’s plastic skeletons two stories tall,
memories of falling in a puddle in a ballerina costume
on the way to a neighbor’s door, gauze ghosts
dangling from naked limbs, costume party
shootings. Zombie and Yorick skulls on leafy lawns.
Or family feuds over dividing her dead
father’s assets. Her brother’s cleaver.
Or porches and lanterns doused in acrylic webs
and jack o’ lanterns whose smiles sag in mold.
TV images of fractured concrete in bombed out enclaves.
Forty-two million tons of rubble, 36 cubic feet each ton,
a grave takes 120 cubic feet. Flinch. The dead walk
starved, confused. Hamlet’s father’s ghost refuses
to speak. A revived corpse never asks
for a Kiss or Snickers.
Maybe it’s money. Twelve billion
on starbursts, skittles, candy corn, and twix.
You could buy half an island with a fog bell
in San Francisco Bay. Climate chaos
balloons the cost of chocolate.
Days narrow. Clocks reset and whack rhythms.
Lively green folds into loam. We hear carols.
Ads run for books of evangelical horror
and Amish romance. Stuffed Santas
line pharmacy shelves beside pumpkin
plastic pails of high fructose corn syrup.
Flimsy polyester dinosaur suits crawl
to landfills. Few believe in reasons
to wear masks. What am I to do?
Write another starlight promise
poem? Light the bonfire?