Razorblades inside the popcorn balls, LSD secreted in the
candy – here was the other horror story on Halloween
back in the 60s where kids in white sheets and carrying
paper sacks instead walked neighbourhoods safely
without parents and in the certain hope of bulging bags
filled with a different kind of deadly.

So much older and no longer there,
I wonder at those same streets now: escorts with guns
who might shoot anyone not giving because this is our
ritual; checking for messages on the inside of wrappers [like
calls to worship a different god]; strange scared faces at curtains
ignorant about years of these festivities and the dangers we can
imagine but at least call American, or subliminals unlike ours
about sugar and the other sweet certainties of who we are.