Ghost-Dog Walk with Sadie Through the Remnants of Halloween

by Michael Brockley

Thirty-one jack-o’lanterns dangle from the branches of the holiday tree across the street from where a twenty-foot skeleton guards a shadowed ranch. Sadie inhales the scents of mid-November. Pumpkin pulp and caramel apples. The laughter of children, disguised as princesses. As superheroes. A wayward demon gobsmacked itself, pile driving into the trunk of a silver maple. Michael Myers lurks behind a yew on Berkeley. At the corner where we found a black bra last summer, we discover a phantom-of-the-opera mask, with one teardrop glistening beneath the right eye. I slip Sadie a peanut butter-flavored treat without asking for a trick.

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Michael Brockley is a retired school psychologist who lives in Muncie, Indiana. His poems have appeared in The Prose Poem, Last Stanza Poetry Journal, and Gyroscope Review. Poems are forthcoming in Stormwash: Environmental Poems, Volume II and 912 Review. 

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