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Pumpkins @ Small Stories and Stuff - 10/03/10
Golden soldiers in slack formation
wait to be loaded, packed into trucks
carted to markets, fall festivals,
to be inspected, chosen or not
for bundling into minivans for
the trip to death row, the carving knife
waiting on the kitchen counter.
Cut them, gut them, bake them into pies.
Purée the pulp to polished pudding
spiced with cinnamon, sugar of brown.
Bake them in crunchy crusts with sugared
rims, slice them into silken servings,
flavor of fall.
Or make them jack-’o-lanterns, creepy
as clowns, eerie carved-out orange orbs
candle flames flickering through triangled
eyes, snaggle-toothed grins, freaky frowns.
© cj Schlottman