The Foreword to the new book “The Wisdom of Our Ancestors: Conservative Humanism and the Western Tradition.”
Halloween
This poem appears in the Fall 2018 issue of Modern Age. To subscribe now, go here.
We aren’t monsters, we’re just masks
With bite-sized kids inside.
The licorice-black new moon tonight
Has got something to hide.
The lights are off in all the houses
Up and down this street.
The gumdrop has a needle gouge
And isn’t safe to eat.
The monster wears a judge’s robe,
The monster wears a badge,
The monster wears a suit and gathers
Kids into his bag.
We stumble singly up the steps,
We rap on the darkened door
And drop like candy from a hand
Into the opened floor.
Amit Majmudar’s latest book is Godsong: A Verse Translation of the Bhagavad-Gita, with Commentary (Knopf, 2018). His forthcoming books are Soar: A Novel (Penguin India, 2019) and Kill List: Poems (Knopf, 2020).
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