ReMix

I said so many stupid things today.

I can't keep up.

I reread my last post and winced so badly
at the spelling errors that
I am considering
rechecking my post before I, uh, post.

Naaa.

A girl can only do so much.
ANd since this blog has no professional ties--
who cares?
All of you know/think I'm whacked anyway.

I have a plastic bat ring on my pinky.

Hallowwen holds many unnerving memories for me--
but this year, I feel over them:



Waking up on the morning he left
with swollen eyes,
my bare feet cold on the hallway linoleum,
I opened the front door
to the sun rising on my right,
piercing through the turning leaves
of oaks on Mirabeau Street. The newly paved black asphalt
accentuated the cut edge of every leaf's angle

and globs of orange pumpkin guts,
broken shells up and down both sides
of the block. Jack's with busted grins
smeared and heaped in piles
so thick--I could never understand.

The orange was beautiful though. Fresh.
Untouched though the night.
White seeds glinting from sticky jucies.

That was the first year
we went all out and bought
the biggest pumpkin we could find.
Too perfect to carve, to pierce,
but inevidably ending in the middle of a street
in a pile of perfect splats. Undistinguished.

The following fall I kept my pumpkin inside--
sitting in the corner of the atrium.
I ignored it for weeks. For months.
Finally, when I noticed the gnats,
I took a grimy dustpan and threw it out back
into the trash. Its teeth and mouth past sucken in.

And so. The turning years bring pound after pound
of perfect pumpkin flesh now, bought and purchased in the sun.
I run my hands over waxy rinds and smile.
I smile. Smile. Smile.