Deborah Wanzer
October 2020
October,
Crawls into town on all
Four years, wondering:
Has this been an interlude?
An interrupting minstrel-show
For the basest of the base?
Some say, an aberration,
An oddity, an albino squirrel,
Spectacle of the neighborhood—
Shocks of white
Amid autumnal leaves.
Exhausting and exhausted,
October
Plays songbirds sinking
From smoky skies,
Swallows from a firehose
Of cock and bull stories.
Out of breath,
October remembers organs
Once pink and supple,
Blaze now with the sickly
Sour of pneumonic bonfires.
October,
Eighth month of the Roman calendar
Older now, timeworn.
—Submitted on 10/25/2020 to the erstwhile What Rough Beast series
Deborah Wanzer is a clinical social worker.
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