Harvest Moon Phantoms

Ancient apple fields yawned by the roadside, with
a labyrinth of pumpkins winding down the parking lot;
wooden crates bubbled with
gnarled dip-dyed gourds and
bowling-ball squashes, even
white pumpkins,
white pumpkins whose shells were
whitewashed by the moon fairy;

Pumpkinhead scarecrows
twitched in the October breeze;
the sugar off cider donuts was
licked off windchapped noses;
the bloodred coating of a candy apple
dissolved into burnt sugargasm;
pumpkin flesh singed from candlefire
flickered in jack-o-lantern eyes;
a graveyard of cardboard tombstones
was haunted by ghosts that hung from invisible thread,
moaning from battery voiceboxes;

Symphonies of shrieks chorused
to the grinding of a chainsaw
wielded by rubber skeleton hands, and werewolves in overalls
latched onto hayride trailers under a grinning disc of moon until
the fall of my freshman year
of high school they
bulldozed it for a strip mall.