Every morning, I walk in my neighborhood for about four or five miles. This month I’m greeted by skeletons rising up out of front lawns, bony dogs and owls on neighbors’ stoops, headstones dotting suburban yards. It’s never been my favorite holiday.
Enjoy All Hallows’ Eve, a poem by Dorothea Tanning.
Be perfect, make it otherwise.
Yesterday is torn in shreds.
Lightning’s thousand sulfur eyes
Rip apart the breathing beds.
Hear bones crack and pulverize.
Doom creeps in on rubber treads.
Countless overwrought housewives,
Minds unraveling like threads,
Try lipstick shades to tranquilize
Fears of age and general dreads.
Sit tight, be perfect, swat the spies,
Don’t take faucets for fountainheads.
Drink tasty antidotes. Otherwise
You and the werewolf: newlyweds.