Razorblades inside the popcorn balls, LSD a secret in the
candy – here was another Halloween horror story

from the 60s where kids ghosted in sheets and carrying
paper sacks would safely stroll neighbourhoods

without parents and in the certain hope of bulging bags
filled with a different kind of deadly.

The many years and removed by this distance,
wondering 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 foreign 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.