The
Candy Corn Cycle - October poetry by Jarbabyj
Dante Forgot
Hell is a Red Line train
Packed and damp
Rattling incessantly
Through a dark, musty tunnel.
Fellow souls
Breathe garlic on your neck
Blare tinny music against you
Press their sweating chests
Against your back
Riders stumble and grope
In the darkness
When the lights flicker out
Screeching metal
Rumbling wheels
The soundtrack is
Torture to untrained ears
Our circle of hell
A loop, a tunnel
A dip of the tracks
Our punishment for greed
Ambition and power
Eternal commuting
Triptych Ambrosia
It depends on your mood, she said
You can either pop them in your mouth whole
Like this (she did it, eating six or seven at once)
Or, you can separate them
White tip first
Then thick, soft orange
Then yellow.
We paused as she did this,
Demonstrating her deftness
At separating the candy.
If you’re feeling zany, she said,
Starting to laugh,
You can take the yellow bottoms and
Stick them on your teeth
Like sweet, sticky caps
And then your teeth look like
They’re made of corn!
Lobotomy
He has no say in what happens
Just like any victim
He just lays there, as they draw on him
Holding him down, using markers
Pencils
His head is cut open, and his innards
Pulled out
We’ll eat this later, they say,
Continuing to giggle
We’re going to make you smile, they say
No, Scream!, the little one says
And there’s nothing he can do
They gouge his eyes
Dig at his teeth and gums
Laughing as they go
Finally, they leave him
Butchered and hollow
Burning on the inside
Sitting on the porch
In the rain.
Things I Like
Beef Stew and dumplings on a cool night
Shoofing through leaves
On a painfully blue and sunny day
Pumpkins, Corn
Football and chili
Burning Fireplaces
Fun Size Candy
Big Thick Sweaters and corduroy
Coming home from school
And mom is in the kitchen
Making Corn Chowder
And home made rolls
Dinner’s in fifteen minutes
She says, smiling
Everyone’s already happy
and they don’t even know
I got the lead
In the school play
Going Up To Mustards
He got a little gleam in his eye
And drove without telling me where
I flipped through the radio stations
Looking for the game on A.M.
We left the city, the buildings
The traffic, the trash in the streets
And escaped to the open, northern suburbs
Where fathers raked up leaves
And Golden Retrievers barked on porches
Packs of students shuffled to the game
We went to Mustard’s for hot dogs
And cheese fries and dripping, hot italian beef
It would have been the perfect day
Had the parking lot not been riddled with bees.