by Jannett Highfill
Witches’ hats, black cats, and jack-o’-lantern
bits of plastic in a cellophane bag
from Celebrations, décor for a hag
party, litter under foot for the turn
of the screw, Halloween is the second
most important holiday for the stores
and I like to do my part, buying more
than even my physical but fecund
imagination requires. I’ll fuse
two latex masks—stare out of Reagan’s left
eye and wink with Gorbachev’s right. With kites
for wings I’ll turn into a rocket, use
tinfoil for mummy-wrap, and cast myself
as the Bride of Frankenstein in mauve tights.
Jannett Highfill is a Great Plains poet living in Kansas. Her poems have appeared in Rhino, Common Ground Review, The Iowa Review, The Greensboro Review, and elsewhere. She has three chapbooks, Light Blessings Drifting Together, A Constitution of Silence, and Brown Restless Green. She is coauthor of A Tempered and Humane Economy: Markets, Families, and Behavioral Economics from Lexington Books.
Little Leaf Literary Journal 