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Pumpkins
They deceive us. And we them.
Carving our kids’
whims into
their plump &
gusty flesh,
handfuls of scooped seeds
mounding the newspaper-strewn
floor, bent to the scarred oilcloth
saved from the year before,
we huddle in the circle of their
scent —
acrid & still —
blades
tracing grins already
inked into
their bland & swollen skins
that we might alter,
always, if
we dare — slight
frenzy, grimace,
calm — by one swift
slice or angle
of the wrist. Our kids, all goggle-
eyed, watch on. And on we carve,
refining lines — the
razor’s edge
of their gapped teeth
— not
quitting where we
might, now
hardly conscious that we carve
for them . . . . Finished now.
They stare, queer, droll, triangle-
eyed, crescent mouths
agape.
Our kids squeal with
delight.
Days beyond
festivities, the
neighborhood grown
calm
again in chill fall’s
leafless time,
they lean from the
porch ledge,
dull orange, spent,
features
caving in &
turning pulp. We
watch
them now the most,
&
feel them kin. Their smiles
as they rot, become more real.
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Dan Stryk's X-ray
"Pumpkins" first appeared in The Southern Humanities Review,
and later in Dan’s first full-length volume of poems,The Artist
and the Crow (Purdue University Press). This revised
version will be appearing in Back to the Source: Selected
Poems & Parables [
