Hil Hoover
Put On Your Halloween Costume, My Love
Put on your Halloween costume, my love,
limn the world in bone-white light,
draw around you the perfect pattern
of darkening cloud, to sway to and fro
like a magician’s cloak, in the right
moment to cause the heroine’s
stumble, the victim’s fall, the bloody reveal
of a flashing knife.
You, variably huntress, cheese wheel,
man’s face with a capsule in your eye,
werewolf’s delight and terror,
conquered territory of humanity
if only for a moment, if only for
a photo op, symbol of lovers
and maidens, of changing
tides and times.
Put on your best destruction dress,
your best tsunami shoes
(those aren’t you? I didn’t know!)
let’s go dancing, love, let’s skip
through a forest canopy and
let slip a single beam just in time,
illuminate the sickle swing, the grim victory
of a final girl.
You, variably symbol of purity,
symbol of romance, farmer’s tool,
feared omen, cycle of womb blood, of life,
scientific marvel, claimed by every
mystic, every lonely child, and by me,
this night, this poem, this desperate plea,
put on your Halloween costume, my love,
for I have time to kill, and more to kill,
and would see blood by moonlight.