October Queen

It’s hard to deny how October makes a woman want
to burn a man because she can, as if by formula
or witchy spell—how the month is a room
in an old hotel with a mountain-view where their clothes drop off
like brightly colored leaves—how goth girls go berserk
at the county’s harvest fair in the big-box parking lot,
and strippers make their living in a dark tent on the edge of town,
setting fire to corn husk dolls between their thighs.

There is no carnie’s finnegan pin to make the season click
into gear and hum along like a ferris wheel—
only the decorative dried cornstalks, hay bales,
and pumpkins in front of the grocery store, disguising
something on sale that will slowly kill me—
only the shelf-shout of black blood and guts hanging slick
and stringy in yellow poplars on the Trail of Terror—
only fear’s effortless effort chilling every step
along my six miles of nerves as I go out of my way
to find the one I know I cannot find—only the infinity pool
of constellated stars plunging me to the bottom
of some older, darker anarchy.

A wine moon illuminates the nightly harvest of decay.
My poor heart wishes it were as dry and empty as a bean pod.
October, my queen, with your silky fingers of frost,
rip open the seed sack of the world, spilling what can never be
gathered up again, and I will tell you my ghost story
that ends with the lines, Know that the moon’s yellow face
is fixed in an old yellow book, the lord of every story
holds the shepherd’s crook. How many times will I look
through the eyes of your death mask
before the final walk down the hill, the final turn on my street
toward home?