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?

John A. Blackard
http://www.johnablackard.com/

A multimedia version of the poem-
http://www.vizzvox.com/stories/fnHRLMMNzmkZk02fms