So Halloween is about a month away, & perhaps not on anyone's mind right now; but where I teach, it's a reasonably big deal, and moreover, I'll be dressing up in a particularly humorous costume, so I'm looking forward to it. Moreover, the literary magazine at my school, which I advise, will be hosting a Halloween-themed Poetry Slam in an effort to drum up schoolwide interest. Right now I'm looking to gather a nice collection of poems so that if no one writes anything, we'll still be able to perform and have some fun. Anybody have or know any poems to help me out?
I'll start. I remember this one by Alicia, posted a few years ago around Halloween:
A Bone to Pick With You
It's time to take the skeleton out of the closet,
Where it has lain these months in the catalogued gloom,
Stored bone by bone in boxes and brown paper parcels:
Femurs, vertebrae, fibulas, skull, meta-tarsals.
It's time to put it together with wires and hooks,
To light the sullen lantern behind its sockets,
And dress it in the black suit with the fraying pockets,
And the creaking shoes with holes worn through the soles.
It's the time of year when the skeleton malingers
On the front porch, and the neighbors point their fingers,
(But nobody, nobody whispers behind our backs.)
It's time to take the skeleton out of the closet,
Where it lies the rest of the year like a safety deposit,
Accruing the interest of dust, and a layer of gossip.
Later we'll drag it back in, and bone by bone
We'll take it apart, and clean it with acetone,
And pack it in cotton-balls, muffled with tissue paper—
We'll padlock the door, so that no one can ever tattle.
But something's afraid of the dark. Hear it rattle, rattle.
Sticking with the theme of skeletons, there's this by Richard Wilbur:
To His Skeleton
Why will you vex me with
These bone-spurs in the ear,
With X-rayed phlebolith
And calculus? See here,
Noblest of armatures,
The grin which bares my teeth
Is mine as yet, not yours.
Did you not stand beneath
This flesh, I could not stand,
But would revert to slime
Informous and unmanned;
And I may come in time
To wish your peace my fate,
Your sculpture my renown.
Still, I have held you straight
And mean to lay you down
Without too much disgrace
When what can perish dies.
For now then, keep your place
And do not colonize.
Good things there. Can anybody think of others? Thanks in advance.
Chris
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