Title: Finger Lickin' Halloween
My favourites were cubes: Pineapple, Kola, and other boiled confections
like toffee crunch loose in quarters, weighed out from glass jars
lining the sweet shop shelves.
Square quater bags and two-ounce triangular paper cones, at the base,
where small fingers could firkle, lay sugar and slivers of sweets,
a delight on the fingertip, on the tongue. My mouth waters at the memory
that's lasted as long as sherbert fountains and liquorice sticks, gob stoppers and bubble gum.
Hallowe'en brought cinder toffee and Blackjacks to stain your tongue.
- By Polly Stretton, 2019
Title: Hallowe'en Harbinger
Open the curtains to a corker
of ghost-mist; murky in October
looming, veil draped, dim and wet,
grey robed, bone frail, cold sober.
- By Polly Stretton, 2015
Title: Marley Unchained
Wearing the night like an ill-fitting gown,
he watches the face he used to know glide
across a concave mirror, thinning his frame,
spreading him taller but no more solid.
How hollow his limbs, how pallid his face;
no child could sleep through his scream
but this house is as barren as his brow,
the creak of boards no louder than mice.
- By Sue Spiers
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