Halloween in the Anthropocene, 2015 by Craig Santos Perez

Darkness spills across the sky like an oil plume.
The moon reflects bleached coral. Tonight, let us
praise the sacrificed. Praise the souls of  black

boys, enslaved by supply chains, who carry
bags of cacao under West African heat. “Trick
or treat, smell my feet, give me something good

to eat,” sings a girl dressed as a Disney princess.
Let us praise the souls of   brown girls who sew
our clothes as fire unthreads sweatshops into

smoke and ash. “Trick or treat, smell my feet, give me
something good,” whisper kids disguised as ninjas.
Tonight, let us praise the souls of Asian children

who manufacture toys and tech until gravity sharpens
their bodies enough to cut through suicide nets.
“Trick or treat, smell my feet, give me,” shout boys

camouflaged as soldiers. Let us praise the souls
of  veterans who salute with their guns because
only triggers will pull God into their ruined

temples. “Trick or treat, smell my feet,” chant kids
masquerading as cowboys and Indians. Tonight,
let us praise the souls of native youth, whose eyes

are open-pit uranium mines, veins are poisoned
rivers, hearts are tar sands tailings ponds. “Trick
or treat,” says a boy dressed as the sun. Let us

praise El Niño, his growing pains, praise his mother,
Ocean, who is dying in a warming bath among dead
fish and refugee children. Let us praise our mothers

of  asthma, mothers of  cancer clusters, mothers of
miscarriage — pray for us — because our costumes
won’t hide the true cost of our greed. Praise our

mothers of  lost habitats, mothers of  fallout, mothers
of extinction — pray for us — because even tomorrow
will be haunted — leave them, leave us, leave —

From: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/88745/halloween-in-the-anthropocene-2015

Date: 2016

By: Craig Santos Perez (1980- )

To a Persistent Phantom by Frank Smith Horne

I buried you deeper last night
You with your tears
And your tangled hair
You with your lips
That kissed so fair
I buried you deeper last night.

I buried you deeper last night
With fuller breasts
And stronger arms
With softer lips
And newer charms
I buried you deeper last night.

Deeper . . . . . . aye, deeper
And again tonight
Till that gay spirit
That once was you
Will tear its soul
In climbing through . . .
Deeper . . . . . . aye, deeper
I buried you deeper last night.

From: https://poets.org/poem/persistent-phantom-0

Date: 1926

By: Frank Smith Horne (1899-1974)

Moonlight Monologue for the New Kitten by Péter Kántor

The old kitten is replaced by a new baby kitten
the old dog by a new pup
like a dead Monday by Tuesday.

They stroke the new kitten in their laps
so that their excess affection won’t go sour,
so that it will love them in return, like the old one did.

But for me they aren’t replaceable,
not the kitten, not the Monday, not anything else;
for me they never die.

They only distance themselves, or dwell in me
disappearing into the distance: they dwell in my heart and ears,
like the Moonlight Sonata dwells in a piano.

Gone? No new rain rinses the shower-scent
of an old Monday from me,
no matter how hard it pours, hisses, streams.

Ridiculous, maybe, but it feels good to me,
like an old stone in the cemetery,
on which a bird might drop its feather.

Out there in the City Park and everywhere,
where forgetting fattens fresh ice,
how many, attentively oblivious, are skating!

I understand them, that on slippery ground
they alone possess life while living,
as long as is possible, and as best as is possible.

But for me easy grief’s loathsome,
and the easy solace of what’s easily replaced;
if I’m no more, they’ll replace me soon.

I know, if I’m no more, they’ll have someone else,
who’ll lie in their beds for me,
pant, talk, suffer, love.

But why shouldn’t it be this way? It might
need to be this way— why expect the unexpectable,
the too hard, the too much?… I understand.

And yet, for me, it’s irreplaceable
and what used to be dear doesn’t stop being dear.
And it is still too early to love the new kitten.

I don’t put it in my lap, because the old one’s
absence still burns there. I know
if I’m no more, there’ll be someone else.

From: https://poets.org/poem/moonlight-monologue-new-kitten

Date: 2010 (original in Hungarian); 2010 (translation in English)

By: Péter Kántor (1949-2021)

Translated by: Michael Blumenthal (1949- )

Afterlife by John Burnside

When we are gone
our lives will continue without us

– or so we believe and,
at times, we have tried to imagine

the gaps we will leave being filled
with the brilliance of others:

someone else gathering plums
from this tree in the garden,

someone else thinking this thought
in a room filled with stars

and coming to no conclusion
other than this –

this bungled joy, this inarticulate
conviction that the future cannot come

without the grace
of setting things aside,

of giving up
the phantom of a soul

that only seemed to be
while it was passing.

From: https://www.scottishpoetrylibrary.org.uk/poem/afterlife/

Date: 2007

By: John Burnside (1955- )

Faery Land by John Imlah

O! Had I an enchanter’s wand,
And could con the words of potent spell,
I would hie away to the dreamy land
Where the merry elves and the fairies dwell,
Some purple bell or bud of gold
My home and my hiding place should be,
And more dear would the floweret’s silken fold
Than a marble palace be to me!

On my fragment couch ere the morning ray,
To be rock’d to rest by the zephyr’s sigh,
In the sweetest slumber during day,
Nor wake till the moon was bright and high,
O! then on the dewy green hill-side,
Deftly to dance through the mystic maze,
And quick as thought in the blossom hide
From the early shepherd’s wond’ring gaze!

From: http://www.blackcatpoems.com/i/faery_land.html

Date: 1841

By: John Imlah (1799-1846)

The Black Cat on My Lap by Jennifer Pierce

A poem for Murder Kitty.

There sits on my lap the blackest black cat
Her name is Penelope

If I move to the left or to the right
She bites me immediately

I have on my lap a dangerous cat
known to most as Penelope

She sports stunning green eyes
and the sleekest physique
one that would cause
any
madam
real jealousy

I have on my lap a dangerous beast
she loves me most on this earth
until I don’t do her bidding and then…

I’m not kidding!

Those claws of hers wreck my world
how many scars and ripped up upholsteries
does one cat momma need see?

I have a black cat that sits on my lap
She is queen of all she surveys
the blackest black cat
with glowing green eyes
her name is Penelope

If you don’t treat her right
if you get in a fight
she will kill you!
You’ll see

I have on my lap
the blackest, black cat

We call her Murder Kitty
Penelope for short.

From: https://medium.com/flint-and-steel/the-black-cat-on-my-lap-cdc7e5047b5c

Date: 2022

By: Jennifer Pierce (19??- )

Chekhov’s Gun by Joey Connolly

From a train, she passes how all things pass, wrapped
in their instants, messy and simple as the as-yet unlooked-at

complication, under the sign for a rail-station named Marsden –
which is like the surname of a first love, from

before I understood, like now – standing alone,
the inscrutable woman, all cheekbones

and short hair, and red polkadots rapped onto their white,
her hand raised to rest – perhaps briefly – against her cheek. Life,

for Chekhov, is neither horrible, nor happy,
but strange-unique-fleeting-beautiful-awful, according to Gerhardie

in this book I was reading before I shot by and saw the lee
of the sign for Marsden. And for me, also – and for me.

From: https://poemsinwhich.wordpress.com/2013/10/09/chekhovs-gun/

Date: 2013

By: Joey Connolly (19??- )

Spell to Banish a Ghost by Nancy Takacs

At night I hear Anna
snipping toenails
in my wicker chair,
smell her cologne,
Ambush.

Once my favorite aunt,
she whispered to me
with venom
when I was twenty
she never liked me
because I was born
last in our family
and took her place.

She died alone
last October
with a brain tumor.

She eyes me in sink water
from my mother’s dishes,
her blue face in their lilies,
her earrings like onions.

She cocks her head,
skinny robin on my side-mirror,
then craps on my door handle.

So tonight on this quarter moon,
I make a fire.
I find my red frying pan,
fill it with lavender oil
and wait till it hisses.

I hold my only picture of her,
write her name on the back of it,
and kiss it three times.

From: https://sundressblog.com/

Date: 2021

By: Nancy Takacs (19??- )

Incest by Laura Madeline Wiseman

Though the word is never said, it speaks
from the shadows of the dorm room—like a specter,
like the electricity snapping off—its n the number of times,
infinite and variable, the i small and singular and his.

He says don’t tell. He’s told no one. He holds me
on the couch beside him, the beds lofted
far above us, the thump, thump of bass
of passing cars, the overhead lights suddenly bright,

after I have seconds with the words, years with other horrors,
I say okay, choking on the o,
holding the s far back in my throat for his sister,
like a hiss, and that terrible t, that cross
unbearable, unholy, his wrong.

After that night, he erases me
from his life, imagining that dark e
like a half-eaten apple, like a face laughing
behind my eyes. It was never that,
it was soft, the sound the breath makes when escaping.

From: https://peonymoon.wordpress.com/2013/11/10/protest-against-rape-sunday-may-be-triggering/

Date: 2013

By: Laura Madeline Wiseman (1978- )

Assembling by Abegail Morley

She borrows her pelt from the cat, lies back,
wallows in its stunted silken threads, the weave

of its stitching, how fur overlaps, silver hair on hair,
hind legs soft, subtle as saplings. She takes her eyes

from the ancients ‒ black rocks, thick set, as if put in place
by a salt gale. She fumbles for lips, hits on a breadth

of red horizon brimming from the window ‒
sculpts her nose from ice found in shattered pools,

melts, shapes like soft wet cloth or tacky clay.
She makes herself every day from lost particles, snippets

of sentences, things hidden from view. One day
she’ll show him all this, undress, exhibit herself

unaware he’s waited for years. Absent words jabber
from the ache of silence, burrow in his foolish head.

Sometimes late at night he’ll hear her after rain,
her raw voice will hang in the air for hours.

From: https://andotherpoems.com/2017/02/17/assembling-by-abegail-morley/

Date: 2017

By: Abegail Morley (19??- )