Samhainophobia

Trick-or-treating in grade school,
we hunted the houses with the most
polyester cobwebs, strobe lights, bedsheet ghosts,
rubber-masked grim reapers with flashing eyes
that cackled and snapped their jaws;
the more obscured by tangles of twisted oaks
and brambles and shrubs the house was,
the faster we tore across its lawn.

Sophomore year of high school we ventured into
the deepest shadows of surburbia, costumes for armor:
a prom-queen ghost, a hanging victim, a zombie nun.
The firehouse siren blasted nine. We tramped across asphalt littered with toilet paper streamers, shaving cream spatters and dried leaves that crackled beneath the rubber soles of our sneakers
in the post-curfew silence. It was at the junction of Westwood
and Terbell Ave. that the prom queen's arm shot out,
fingers gripping plastic scepter until her knuckles turned white,
as her drooping jaw cracked the white foundation caked on her face
and her melting eyeballs streaked her mascara.

She prodded the rest of us with her scepter until
a rustle sounded in the distance; she shrieked and bolted,
and we followed suit, sprinting half a mile
straight to her house.

In between bites of bonbons and caramel chews
we learned from the prom queen sitting cross-legged on the carpet,
crown cocked to one angle and scepter on the piano stool,
that the two-story gray colonial with the unfinished driveway
at the end of Terbell, abandoned since the summer of sixth grade,
was home to a convicted rapist who had just been released
on parole the week before.

Inspired by Black Phoenix Alchemy Lab's perfume blend of the same name

A Murder of Crows

In a gauzy dusk pierced by the screech of a murder of crows stray petals from funeral swags swirl in icy gusts scattering them across the headstones;
With lips chapped raw, bluish feet upon the granite, I trample bruised petals and dead leaves on your sepulcher.
Naked branches rattle a disjointed rhythm and crows cackle, all oilslick wings and marble eyes glinting in a shaft of moonlight as the edges of a vindictive smile curl upon Luna’s spectral face.
With every crack and chap of salty lips every stream of blood streaking my nightshirt clotting in the crevices of the engraving; every crimson blotch upon scentless petals blown over from a spray that was not even yours sends your poison seeping through cracks in the stone through six feet of packed earth to its source in a pine box.
When even shadows tremble in the chill and dead leaves are embalmed with frost is when I finally leave the sepulcher and your memory to the crows.

Aftermath of the 4th of July

Aftermath of the 4th of July

Lawns are bathed in
lurid prime-time television glow,
air saturated with anti-mosquito citronella.
Fireflies string together on azalea bushes,
garden lanterns bobbing in the breeze like glowing tangerines, stillness peppered with mutters from upstairs and the buzz and crack of moths and beetles exploding into sparks
in electric bug-zappers as cicadas hum to the tune of a crackling radio
playing in the background for teenagers
on the driveway lighting sparklers which explode into anemones that dissolve and fall gently down to earth in a shower of confetti shards.