Treat for You: A Halloween Poem

Are you wearing a costume right now?

[photo: Zyanya Citlalli/Unsplash+]

Happy Halloween!

We’re in London to see Macbeth! But we couldn’t let the highpoint of Spooky Season pass by without a little treat for you.

Here’s a sweet poem, the literary equivalent of a full-size candy bar in your trick-or-treat bag.

Trick or Treat by Nancy Price

The ghost is a torn sheet,

the skeleton’s suit came from a rack in a store

the witch is flameproof, but who knows

what dark streets they have taken here?

Brother Death, here is a candy bar.

For the lady wearing the hat from Salem: gum.

And a penny for each eye, Lost Soul.

They fade away with their heavy sacks.

Thanks! I yell just in time.

Thanks for another year!

Nancy Price (1925-2023) was a poet before she wrote the novel Sleeping with the Enemy. More than a hundred of her poems have appeared in publications, including The Atlantic, The New York Times, and Saturday Review. This poem is from her book Two Voices and a Moon (2007).