Her zest has been buried for too many moons.
Tonight, she has risen to nocturnal tunes
That thrum in the hoot of a shadowy owl
And hum in the howling of wolves on the prowl.
 
She weaves and she skips beneath flickering stars
Beguiled by the bustle of bistros and bars.
Imbued with the spirit of mischief and pluck
She hoodoos the heart of each hot-blooded buck.
 
She hovers and wuthers and wafts through the crowd.
She’s hauntingly naughty and shawled in a shroud.
Now loose from her tomb with the battiest brain
She kisses the stunned Casanovas insane.
 
With sass in her sockets and snap in her bones,
With scarabs adorning her decomposed zones,
She perks every pumpkin-packed, fiend-friendly scene –
This fustiest, flirtiest trick-or-treat queen.

*****

Susan Jarvis Bryant writes: “I will admit to being a bit of a Halloween curmudgeon… unless it comes to treating and tricking with words. Every Halloween my Muse is inspired to sing of witches and warlocks and the odd dead fox… and I simply have to dance to her spooky tune.”

‘The Dead Fox’ was originally published in Snakeskin.

Susan Jarvis Bryant is originally from the UK and now lives on the coastal plains of Texas. Susan has poetry published on The Society of Classical Poets, Lighten Up Online, Snakeskin, Light, Sparks of Calliope, and Expansive Poetry Online, The Road Not Taken, and New English Review. She also has poetry published in The Lyric, Trinacria, and Beth Houston’s Extreme Formal Poems and Extreme Sonnets II anthologies. Susan is the winner of the 2020 International SCP Poetry Competition and was nominated for the 2022 and 2024 Pushcart Prize. She has published two books – Elephants Unleashed and Fern Feathered Edges.

Photo by Kegen Benson, BLM Wildlife Biologist. BLMUtah – Public domain – Kit Fox at Night (51191359677)