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Hilda Weiss​
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The Contractor’s Halloween
He did not carve the pumpkin.
Instead, he used surplus fixtures:
two brass doorknobs for eyes,
a round mouth from a rubber strainer
fitting a kitchen sink, nose—none,
but two vanity drains—expensive—
sprouted into horns. Each night
under the porch light, that jack-
with-no-lantern sat stunned.
No one pilfered or defaced
the round, orange deviation. Still,
the head decayed. An eyeball sagged.
Looked sideways. The day after
Halloween, the contractor woke up late,
went out to embrace his vegetable, slid
his hands under the hodgepodge face,
lifted where the jowls should be—
infected tissue, pus, the rotted shell.
The bottom dropping out of everything.
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Hilda Weiss is a poet and the co-founder/curator for www.Poetry.LA, a website featuring videos of poets and poetry venues in Southern California. Her poetry manuscript, Seemingly Normal, was awarded Honorable Mention by the National Federation of State Poetry Societies. She has a chapbook, Optimism About Trees, and has been published in Rattle, Tinderbox Poetry Journal, Cultural Weekly, The Comstock Review, and Anti-Heroin Chic among others. She lives in Santa Monica, California.