OCTOBER 31

by Tricia Knoll

Photo by Nathaniel Kelly at Flickr.

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? 

Hug her? Kiss her cheek?

Tricia Knoll has usually enjoyed the Halloween season, but not so much this year. Too much angst about election weirdness. She can't stop from thinking about all the money spent on the holiday and how much is needed in war zones. Her poetry is published in nine either full-length books or chapbooks with information at triciaknoll.com

WINNER OF INTERNATIONAL BAT WEEK, 2023

by Cecil Morris

Bureau of Land Management wildlife technician photographed William ShakespEAR, a female Townsend's big-eared bat, in Jackson County. William ShakespEAR won BLM's 2023 Bat Beauty Contest. Photo courtesy Emma Busk / Bureau of Land Management via Oregon Public Broadcasting.

William ShakespEAR—right, not the poet-actor-
playwright who, maybe, made your high school English
class a drag, but a Townsend’s big-eared bat—won
the National Bat Beauty Contest this Halloween
and brought his bouquet of mosquitoes and moths
home to Ashland in southern Oregon, home
of a pretty famous Shakespeare Festival
where, I must admit, I was not bothered by
any flying insects during an evening
performance of Romeo and Juliet
in the outdoor theater. So good on you,
William ShakepEAR. Perhaps you can bring back
glamour to big ears, which would benefit
me, a man almost 70, with thinning hair
and elongating ears (think King Charles III
or the pendulous lobes of Nicole Kidman).
I do not want to be Dumbo with a flat
tire, Dumbo depressed, or Alfred E. Neuman
deflated. Of course, you, Mr. ShakespEAR
have perky, pricked up, Doberman-like ears,
and I am sure no one makes fun of you.
Too bad Bat Week has not had the success
of Shark Week. We need a Spielberg thriller
with blood and menace: EARS. Who’s listening now?

 

Cecil Morris taught high school English for 37 years. Now retired, he spends his time writing poems and shaking his head at the news. He has poems in or forthcoming from Cimarron Review, Hole in the Head Review, The New Verse News, Rust + Moth, Sugar House Review, Willawaw Journal, and other literary magazines.

SATURDAY, OCTOBER 7, 2023

by Katherine West

Even in October 

butterflies crowd 

the butterfly bush

are lifted by the cold 

wind then released 

to drift back to their magenta 

breakfast

in a flurry of giant 

orange flakes 

of Halloween snow 

or fire 

The high rise looks like 

a grey ice cream cake 

left out in the summer 

sun so that slabs 

of cement melt and slide 

down its sides to the street where 

grey children lie 

with their eyes shut 

the party over 

time to go home 

The prairie dog sits up

on its hind legs 

still and alert 

waiting for danger—

shadows of crows 

pass over him and away 

like the low-flying planes 

in black and white newsreels 

of World War Two 

Pale blue flowers 

still cling to the tips 

of the rosemary bush 

but the lavender 

and thyme are dried out 

helpless when the wind 

drives down the mountain 

strips them bare 

In this house the cabinets 

are full of supplies—

ten of everything, power 

to run fountains 

in the desert 

thick walls to keep the heat out 

to keep the heat in--

a fat door like that 

of a castle

Vultures come in a black 

rush sometimes--

the body bags are white 

as lumps of sugar 

with the corners 

licked off

Katherine West lives in Southwest New Mexico, near Silver City.  She has written three collections of poetry: The Bone Train, Scimitar Dreams, and  Riddle, as well as one novel, Lion Tamer. Her poetry has appeared in journals such as Writing in a Woman's Voice, Lalitamba, Bombay Gin, The New Verse News, Tanka Journal, Splash!, Eucalypt, Writers Resist, Feminine Collective, Southwest Word Fiesta, and The Silver City Anthology. The New Verse News nominated her poem “And Then the Sky” for a Pushcart Prize in 2019. In addition she has had poetry appear as part of art exhibitions at the Light Art Space gallery in Silver City, New Mexico, the Windsor Museum in Windsor, Colorado, and the Tombaugh Gallery in Las Cruces, New Mexico. 

MIDDLE-SCHOOL HALLOWEEN PARTY, 1978

by Melissa Balmain

"Millions of kids haven’t lived through a school shooting but fear that they will" —The Washington Post, March 1, 2018 Photo: Students decry gun violence outside the White House on Feb. 21, 2018. (Alex Wong/Getty Images via The Washington Post)

"Absolutely no costumes with weapons, including plastic ones. Masks and fake blood are not allowed. Carefully consider the appropriateness of your costume in a school setting."

—2018 email to Brighton, NY parents about middle-school Halloween parties.

We were vampires, ghosts, and devils,
squeaking Nikes on the floor,
vying with the Hulks and Batmans
over who could drip more gore.
Masks and weapons? How we loved them—
cowboys, Jimmy Carters, clowns,
dancing as we downed Doritos,
relishing the night our town’s
ever-mortifying fishbowl
dimmed for once—our parents’ laws
powerless to keep grape soda
from our orthodontic jaws,
powerless to stop our noisy
bouts of gleeful mimicry
while we battled like Darth Vader
or the ChiPs from NBC. . . .
Home in bed, our darkest nightmares
never hinted at the ways
Halloween would free our children
from their ordinary days.


Melissa Balmain is the Editor of Light, a journal of comic verse. Her poetry collection Walking In on People (winner of the Able Muse Book Award) is often assumed by online shoppers to be some kind of porn.

OLD MAN SHOUTING IN A BARN

by Tricia Knoll

Photo by the poet.

On any given fine fall day and this one was given
as gold on the hills, gold in sunshine after rain,
two young parents push a stroller for a baby
wearing a knit hat down a fine gravel road.


The sun might have known it would dip soon
to a sunset but in that moment’s radiance, I asked
what brought them to this Vermont farm
this afternoon. They had many choices


on a day as fine as this. Snow has already topped
a nearby mountain. My purple petunias took on frost
last night. These October days are numbered
more reluctantly than most days, double digiting.


They said they came to u-pick a pumpkin
for Halloween to carve the baby’s first ghost face.
Light a candle. A fine Sunday to get out. Then
they heard “the old man shouting in the barn.”


I nod to the baby, ask “Another first?”
They smile. Another first for sure.
Too bad the baby won’t remember this.
That old man is Bernie Sanders,


a rally three weeks before mid-terms.
The baby inherits our crisis of climate change
and on this fine day, the old man whipped us
up to cheering his amplified words in a barn.


The mother, father and little boy—who will soon
see his first ghost—go rolling up the road to a field
where they might find a perfect pumpkin,
harvest gold despite this fine summer’s drought.



Tricia Knoll attended the rally in a barn in rural Vermont for Democratic candidates in Vermont on Sunday, October 14. This is a true story that means whatever you think it does.

BEHIND THE MASKS

by David M. Katz

AP photo via El Paso Times, June 17, 2018

Behind the masks each Halloween, there are
The kids who quiver for the candy corn.
They come out of the dark to the lights above
The lintels of doors both safe and terrifying.
There are some who are too small to knock
Even at a parent’s urging. They fear
The giant more than they want the sweets.
But most are brave enough to carry on.
For others, at the border, there are no
Such masks. For them, the shock comes suddenly
Out of the darkness, and the giants who
Lift them from their parents’ arms are too
Vast, too high, too formless to be seen.
This is a different kind of Halloween.

David M. Katz’s books of poems include Stanzas on Oz and Claims of Home, both published by Dos Madres Press. He’s also the author of The Warrior in the Forest, published by House of Keys Press. Poems of his have appeared in Poetry, The Paris Review, The New Criterion, The Hopkins Review, and The Cortland Review.  He is currently working on a new poetry collection, tentatively entitled Money. He lives in New York City and recently retired after a 40-year career as a business journalist and editor.

THE SKELETON RIDES SHOTGUN

by Charlotte Jones

Deathocracy Mask

The night arrives,
that single night of the year,
when the sleigh
pulls free of the underworld,
dragged through the ether
by hellhounds
reined and guided
by the unholy ghost
while the skeleton rides shotgun.

The mission is not to
distribute gifts to
undeserving children,
but to harvest the souls
of those who have bargained
with the devil—
the proud,
the greedy
the politician
who takes away
the rights of the masses.
Their souls in exchange
for power and dominion
over the poor, the weak,
the unsuspecting.

They walk among us,
smug in their undetectability.
You see them on the nightly news,
read about them in the papers,
they sometimes run for president
and rarely, very rarely
they wind up in jail.

But rest assured,
hell awaits.

Charlotte Jones writes poetry and flash fiction in Houston, TX.  Her work has appeared in over eighty literary and commercial magazines including The Bellevue Literary Review, Nerve Cowboy and Barbaric Yawp which nominated her for a Pushcart Prize.  When not writing, she loves to travel, golf, sing and play the piano.

HALLOWEEN AT THE NURSING HOME

by Michael Mark

Image source: Reddit

The tombstones and zombie decorations
look more scared than scary among those
living in translucent skin, rolling their
wheelchairs with skeleton hands,
gasping in their oxygen masks.

The Grim Reaper creeps along the corridors,
behind a walker, to the costume contest,
scythe taped to his back with bloody bandages.

The bedridden plead for him not to pass them by.

No one pulls back in fright or shrieks
from anything other than pain or dementia
or to let themselves and anyone else out
there know they are, for good and bad,
still alive.


Only when the grandchildren come to trick-
or-treat in their jack-o-lantern and fairy
princess costumes do their sunken eyes
rise from their sockets and their colorless
lips tremble with fear.


Michael Mark is a hospice volunteer. His poetry has appeared in Angle Journal, Diverse Voices Quarterly, Empty Mirror, Everyday Poets, Forge Journal, Lost Coast Review, New Verse News, Petrichor Review, Scapegoat, Silver Birch Press, Red Booth Review, The thing itself, The New York Times, The Wayfarer, Work. His poetry has been nominated for The Pushcart Prize.

HALLOWEEN PARTY

by Laura Rodley

Cut from reams of white satin sprang Lawrence

of Arabia, my son Joseph fenc-

ing with a sword made of rough-sawn maple,

a yellow band round headpiece, a staple

from the house to hold it all in one place,

curtain cording his belt, the saving grace,

his sandals of brown leather geared for sand

even as hot as desert, Lawrence’s land.

“Awrence,” he yodeled through the house, so tall

I had to stand on a stool, fashion all

on top his head, long flowing headdress, sheik’s

gear changing a gentle boy, now not meek,

then out the door with friends with worthy cars,

too old for trick-or-treating, too young for bars.

Laura Rodley’s New Verse News poem “Resurrection” appears in The Pushcart Prlze XXXVII: Best of the Small Presses (2013 edition). She was nominated twice before for the Prize as well as for Best of the Net. Her chapbook Rappelling Blue Light, a Mass Book Award nominee,  won honorable mention for the New England Poetry Society Jean Pedrick Award. Her second chapbook Your Left Front Wheel is Coming Loose was also nominated for a Mass Book Award and a L.L.Winship/Penn New England Award. Both were published by Finishing Line Press.  Co-curator of the Collected Poets Series, she teaches creative writing and works as contributing writer and photographer for the Daily Hampshire Gazette.  She edited As You Write It, A Franklin County Anthology, Volume I and Volume II.

TRICK OR TREAT

by Gil Hoy

Corporations are no longer
inanimate sterile things.

They’re now breathing fleshy
with blood money flowing
through wheels levers pistons
rhythmically turning
deep sea blue to ghoul red

anointing black robed
Victor Frankensteins
to keep Fiends well nourished
and magically cause Creatures
to rise from the dead
with their wild incantations.

While Monsters use up
all free speech that is uttered
mere mortals can't buy a word
just a consonant here and again
found in a graveyard.

Some Adams of Victor’s Labors
think (?) contraception
against religion (!), then
Wretches trump people (!?)
as The Modern Prometheus

dissects ghostly law
like a science school project
held together by webs
taken out by morticians
with the afternoon’s trash.

With all mad scientists
the Vile Insects may elect
the black sky’s the limitless.
In the meantime

have mercy
on the poor corporation
yellow lips watery eyes
shriveled face
resist the temptation
to be a bigot.

Gil Hoy studied poetry at Boston University, and started writing his own poetry in February of this year. Since then, Gil’s poems have been published in Soul Fountain, The New Verse News, The Story Teller Magazine, the Clark Street Review, Eye On Life Magazine, and Stepping Stones Magazine.

VET'S HALLOWEEN

by Linda J. Himot

Image source: Shopsafe

Halloween and all those kids in skeletal black,
glow-in-the-dark green and purple –
no fairy princess pink Mama, please –
roam the streets for candy treats while my neighbor,

secreted behind his kitchen counter – shades drawn,
lights out, hides trembling.  Fears ghouls and worse –
gooks –rise – like ghosts – from steamy jungle floor –
every night – silent, stealthy –  then melt away –

before first light.  Dead bodies left to mark their trail.
He made it back – except his mind – to live alone –
on duty, dusk to dawn.  Forty two years he’s kept watch,
high alert, rifle steel slick with sweat – ready,

mission unchanged – protect his buddies, kill
or be killed.  Sees sallow, shiny, enemy faces creeping
through his front yard swampy grass.  Hears mortar
in the back fire of passing trucks, cruising motorcycles.

Fears he will kill a kid if one should knock.
So takes a double dose of meds, stuffs his ears
with cotton, repeats Hail Mary’s aloud until
the fire horn sounds the end of trick or treat.


After many years as a psychiatrist, Linda J. Himot began writing poetry in 2005.  Her poems have been published in a variety of journals such as The MacGuffin, River Poets, The Dead Mule School of Southern Literature. 

TRICK OR TREAT

by David Feela

“My my, and what are you supposed to be?”
“A congress people.”
“That’s precious!  And how did you come up with such a cute idea?”
“My daddy told me to say it.”
“Wouldn’t your daddy help you make a costume?”
“He didn’t do nothing.”
“What a wonderful way to inspire creativity!  How old are you?”
“Eight.”
“How funny!  I know members of congress that won’t survive half as long.”
“Why?”
“Well, little one, it’s because they’re like your daddy.”
“Are they fat?”
“I suppose some are, but mostly they’re just lazy.”
“What’s lazy?”
“Lazy means they want candy for doing nothing.”
“I want candy.”
“Of course you do.  Here, take all you can grab with your grubby little hands.”
“Really?”
“Yes, really.  Better yet, take the entire bag.  And here’s my wallet, my credit cards, plus the keys to my house and car.  Take it all.”
“Gee, you’re a nice lady.”
“Yeah, now scram!  I’ve got to shut off the lights and pretend I’m a Democrat.”


David Feela writes a monthly column for The Four Corners Free Press and for The Durango Telegraph. A poetry chapbook, Thought Experiments, won the Southwest Poet Series. His first full length poetry book, The Home Atlas appeared in 2009. His new book of essays, How Delicate These Arches  , released through Raven's Eye Press, has been chosen as a finalist for the Colorado Book Award.

BANSHEE

by Carolyn Gregory

Image source: NASA

The banshee began to howl
near Halloween,
twisting branches in a dance
of wind and rain

She wore her necklace
of skulls and teeth,
slapping a tambourine
to a four four beat

Black cats scattered!

Her backup singers shimmeyed
and swayed,
tossing long green hair
and tapping on the window

It was an unholy dance,
full of screaming sirens.
Sequins of fire flashed by


Carolyn Gregory's poems and essays on music have been published in American Poetry Review, Main Street Rag, Bellowing Ark, Seattle Review, and Stylus. She was featured in For Lovers and Other Losses. She was nominated for a Pushcart Prize for poetry in 2011 and is a past recipient of a Massachusetts Cultural Council award. Her book, Open Letters, was published by Windmill Editions in 2009 and her next, Facing the Music, will be published in 2012.
_____________________________________________________