Why I Am Afraid Of Turing The Page - a Halloween Poem!

 A Super-creepy poem! This one always freaked me out and made me feel so weird. . . an excellent choice for Halloween (click the video link to hear me read it).

Why I Am Afraid of Turning the Page


by Cate Marvin
Spokes, spooks: your tinsel hair weaves the wheel

that streams through my dreams of battle. Another

apocalypse, and your weird blondeness cycling in

and out of the march: down in a bunker, we hunker,

can hear the boots from miles off clop. We tend to

our flowers in the meantime. And in the meantime,

a daughter is born. She begins as a mere inch, lost

in the folds of a sheet; it's horror to lose her before

she's yet born. Night nurses embody the darkness.

Only your brain remains, floating in a jar that sits

in a lab far off, some place away, and terribly far.

Your skull no longer exists, its ash has been lifted

to wind from a mountain's top by brothers, friends.

I am no friend. According to them. Accordion, the

child pulls its witching wind between its opposite

handles: the lungs of the thing grieve, and that is

its noise. She writhes the floor in tantrum. When

you climbed the sides of the house spider-wise to

let yourself in, unlocked the front door, let me in

to climb up into your attic the last time I saw you

that infected cat rubbed its face against my hand.

Wanting to keep it. No, you said. We are friends.

I wear my green jacket with the furred hood. You

pushed me against chain-length. Today is the day

that the planet circles the night we began. A child

is born. Night nurses coagulate her glassed-in crib.

Your organs, distant, still float the darkness of jars.