Poetry by Sarah Peterson-Camacho : Summer’s End

Summer’s End

it’s a shiver
of embers on ebon air, 
a singe and a
lick blackening the
tongue, a taste of
ashes and wanting. 

the night is ripe with
ghosts, ragged breath. 
beyond the
ghoulish carnival
lies the Samhain
dark, so brief
and lusty with stories
of spirits—the suicide of
a lonely rancher, or a love-
sick girl’s drowning; 
what lies beyond
the pumpkin patch crackles
in its brevity, the veil
torn and throbbing, 
orange moons submerged
in a midnight 
tangle of leaf and vine. 

jagged yellow flicker
candle
crossing pulpy teeth—
a dance of sockets, 
a promise of rot. 

but what might
you meet
among those dying stalks,
what fiend with a 
scarecrow’s leer, what straw-
stubbled kiss?

best to settle amid
the sticky haze of
purple lights
mottling the manufactured
scares—a recorded
witch’s cackle, the chain-
saw’s incessant
whine.  

because come the 
death mask of 
morning, 
all is dank and 
sodden in the greying
mist, 
a trampled flame
of
decaying leaves, 
discarded candy
wrappers—

and the 
gummy shards
of a 
pumpkin’s
                  fatal grin.