Pumpkin smell burned twi-light yellow,
The orange darkness approaching
With a death-dampness feeling
For our legs.
Sun’s rays turned purple now, the gay
Orange searing passive clouds, outlining
Them pink.
Another gourd lit up, its candle wavering,
Then catching hold, buzzing moisture
To steam, the aroma of burned plugged-pumpkin flesh
Oozing into our memories.
The solid plunk of the unopened clunked
On table tops, our goal to disembowel
Thirty heads seemed eerie for humans
Disappointed by warfare, yearning for return
Of troops, not these headless, manic
Beasts we would display across the porch.
We said a prayer for Donald, somewhere near Tikrit,
And hoped his head was whole and filled with the
Music of Springsteen he always
Played at home, his green jeep roaring past
Revelries, usually pumping up
The volume, getting sneers from geezers.
Robin Ouzman Hislop's poetry is certainly in dialogue with some of the key architects of the 'poetics of indeterminacy' – both the Modernist strands represented by the likes of Beckett and Stein, and the postmodernist strands represented, initially,
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