‘Twas Halloween Night

Peter Gregg Slater

‘Twas Halloween night, when all thro’ the house
Every creature was stirring, even grandad an old souse.
The candy bags were hung by the door with care,
In hopes that trick-or-treaters would soon be there.

The kids were all snug in their costume disguise,
While visions of Skittles danc’d in their eyes.
And Mama in J. Crew, and I in my Yankees cap
Had just settled down for a long night of door tap.

When out on the lawn there arose such a clatter,
I sprang from the La-Z-Boy to see what was the matter.
Away to the window I flew like a flash,
Tore open the shutters, and threw up the sash.

The moon on the breast of the new-fallen wet leaves,
Gave the lustre of mid-day to objects under the eaves.
When, what did my shuddering eyes sight,
But a witch squadron in V-form flight.

With a grungy crone in the lead, so twitchy and full of evil zest,
I knew in a moment it must be the Wicked Witch of the West.
More rapid than eagles her coursers they came,
And she whistled, and shouted, and call’d them by name;

“Now Slasher! Now Masher! Now Smasher and Vixen!
On Varmint! On Putrid! On Sunder and Nixon!
To the top of the porch! To the top of the wall!
Now dash away! Dash away! Dash away all!”

As dry leaves before the wild hurricane fly,
When they meet with an obstacle, mount to the sky.
So up to the house-top the coursers they flew,
With their Swifters ashine with witches’ brew.

And then in a twinkling, I heard on the roof tile
The prancing and prowling of the witches vile.
As I drew in my head, and was turning around,
Down the chimney Witch Westy came with a bound.

She was dress’d in janky knockoffs, from her head to her foot,
And her clothes were all tarnish’d with soot.
A bundle of sacks was flung on her back,
And she look’d like a peddler just opening her pack.

Her eyes – how they glared! her warts how distasteful,
Her cheeks were like mold, her nose hateful.
Her narrow nasty mouth was drawn to a gash,
And the faint mustache on her lip as white as ash.

The stump of a stogie she held tight in her teeth,
And the smoke it encircled her head like a wreath.
She had a hatchet face, and a nose like a beak
That wobbled when she shriek’d, like a hose with a leak.

She was lean and mean, a loathsome old doxy
And I shook when I saw her like I had a poxy
A squint of her eye and a thrust of her head
Soon gave me to know I had much to dread.

She spoke not a word, but went straight to her work
And fill’d her sack from our candy stash, then turn’d with a jerk,
And drawing her finger across her throat,
And giving a snarl, up the chimney she rose with her tote.

She sprang to her Swifter, to her coven gave a whistle,
And away they all flew, like bullets from a pistol.
But I heard her holler, ere she drove out of sight-
“A miserable Halloween to all, and to all a terrible night.”

###

Peter Gregg Slater is a historian whose scholarship in American intellectual and cultural history is often referenced in both academic and popular publications. His poetry, fiction, parody, and essays have appeared in “Dash,” “Workers Write!,” “The Westchester Review,” “The Satirist,” and “Twentieth Century Literature,” among other publications.

The Haunted Isle 

By Richard H. Fay

I lie beyond the narrow sandy strand,
A jagged mote upon the horizon,
A rugged speck upon the ocean.
Sailors skirt past my flanks in morbid dread.
My dark hollows house the unshriven dead.

I lie amongst the angry, swelling waves.
Churning foam obscures my treacherous shoals,
Doom for innumerable imperilled souls.
Wretched spirits weep on my savage shore,
Unheard above Poseidon’s constant roar.

I lie shrouded in a bleak, swirling mist,
Cloaked in an eternal obscurity,
Wracked by a turbulent, restless sea.
Haggard spectres drift amidst my grey stones,
Vainly searching for their sun-bleached bones

I lie beyond a mortal’s tenuous ken,
A dismal harbour for woeful secrets,
A forlorn abode of abject regrets.
Rendered barren by the sea’s bitter breath,
My rocky bosom knows nothing but death.

(Poem originally published in Illumen Issue 8, Spring 2008.)

The Vampire
By Charles Baudelaire

You who, like the stab of a knife,
Entered my plaintive heart;
You who, strong as a herd
Of demons, came, ardent and adorned,

To make your bed and your domain
Of my humiliated mind
– Infamous bitch to whom I’m bound
Like the convict to his chain,

Like the stubborn gambler to the game,
Like the drunkard to his wine,
Like the maggots to the corpse,
– Accurst, accurst be you!

I begged the swift poniard
To gain for me my liberty,
I asked perfidious poison
To give aid to my cowardice.

Alas! both poison and the knife
Contemptuously said to me:
“You do not deserve to be freed
From your accursed slavery,

Fool! – if from her domination
Our efforts could deliver you,
Your kisses would resuscitate
The cadaver of your vampire!”

Published in 1857.

The Vampire and the Ball

by Rebecca L. Snowe

Dresses, jewels, mirrors, chandelier.
A human’s ball is a vampire’s feast.

But first a victim to find,
One who is young and fresh.

He sees her across the room,
Skin like ivory, hair like gold.
Introductions are made,
A dance requested.

Her smile is hypnotizing,
Her eyes so blue.
But her neck is what attracts him,
And the blood flowing beneath the skin.

The dance ends and she begs a walk outside.

She thinks of love,
He thinks only of feeding.

Blood on the gravel,
Fangs in the moonlight.

A scream unheard,
The music is too loud.

A handkerchief to clean his chin,
Inside a new dance begins.

He turns and moves back inside,
Another victim is required.

Rebecca L. Snowe is a high-fantasy writer who hates cliché’s, loves the dark and gritty, and is working on becoming a tea addict.

The Grand Illusion

by Maggie Pena

I’m sitting alone in the corner of a room-
darkness all around, but light above-
from somewhere it comes, that little bit,
from somewhere unseen, the light emits.
It must, and so

I’m sitting alone in the corner of a dark room
with the edges of the white walls pinching together over my head
like a squinting eye
It stares right down at me, pinning me to the floor
like a worm,
squashed by the tip-toe of a boot,
that wriggles and convulses,
pinned down to the floor by its own impatient guts.

Where was I in such a hurry to?
I don’t remember now.
I look up to the ceiling and wonder how
the room does continue on.

Is the further wall just as white?
Will some horrid converse come to light
with the slowly creeping dawn?
Creeping like a little worm- all impatient guts and goo,
crying, “Don’t let them see me!
“Don’t let them know!
“Don’t let them come!
“There footfall sounds in unalterable ranks!
“I hear them, hear them,
“nearly see them now,
“and with the dawn, they come creeping and coyly entreating.”
“So will the chasm, too, come to yawn.”

In time, in time;
I am waiting
for the dawn to come illuminating the further wall,
for the boots to come as unalterable law.
In time, in due time;
I am waiting.

I stretch my arms over my head,
the tired sound escaping from my mouth,
and falling out into the darkness of the room,
where the light is dead-
Dead
Dead
Dead
and splattered out into the room like impatient, wormy guts
squirming, squishing, anxious to presume,
to perceive

The careful tip-toe boot,
The careful tip-toeing of the unalterable sound,
that rings against the further wall,
as all around
the darkness closes in
like an eye squinting on high,
like the eye that squishes me down, closing the darkness down,
until the darkness is all,
is all around.