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New
ice sheets the yard,
such spectral ectoplasm
that when poked with a stick
it chirps like Pepe, the blue
canary of your youth. The wind
screeches wetly, a banshee
in galoshes who might've once
been a librarian who went
unloved except for Salinger,
whose dear Holden knew her
best, the soft flabby contours
of her hopeless, phony soul. Snow-
slick branches are bowled
over
with the weight of sitting ghosts
who snuggle together for warmth,
then turn on the portable lamp
and read Poe, that ghoul.
Squirrels scavenge the white for
old acorns. Zombie squirrels.
Poison acorns. Overhead, the
moon glitters like a wedding
ring--two witches race for it,
urging brooms to furious speed
while an alien saucer swoops
low, dilithium-crystal death
rays dead-on aimed at a pair
of green warts on a pair of
hawkish noses on a pair of
witches who are sisters still
fighting for the memory of
a hoodoo priest who dared
love them both but was forced
to choose, and picking neither,
they tore him apart, skin strip
and bone, staking their claim,
bloody flags on the landscape of love.
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