On the Haunted Hayride with Audrey
Keetje Kuipers
Who, by the way, is dead. Who hung herself
in the neighbor鈥檚 woods last week, just in time
for Halloween. Whose lank green hair I know
only from the Missing signs posted
on telephone poles, now rain-logged and peeling
in ragged strips of zombie bandages.
Who should be here tonight not as a ghost
but as a teenager, like these other ten
dressed in scarecrow rags, who blank-faced
writhe to the latest pop hit, spooking
my own small daughter. It鈥檚 alright, I tell her,
towhead hidden in hay bales. Just teenagers.
Audrey, I don鈥檛 have to be your mother
to be furious with you. When a specter
zip-lines across the field, gown aglow
with battery-operated beauty,
my child lifts her eyes and gasps, They forgot
the angel wings, Mommy, so that I want
to stand up and yell, Audrey, get down from there
this minute! Stop scaring me half to death.
is the author of three books of poems, all from BOA Editions:聽Beautiful in the Mouth (2010), winner of the A. Poulin, Jr. Poetry Prize; The Keys to聽the Jail (2014); and All Its Charms(2019). Kuipers鈥� poems, essays, and short stories聽have appeared in Best American Poetry, Narrative, American Poetry Review, and聽Prairie Schooner. She has been a Wallace Stegner Fellow, Bread Loaf鈥檚 Katharine聽Bakeless Nason Fellow, the Emerging Writer Lecturer at Gettysburg College,聽and the recipient of fellowships from the Lucas Artist Residency, the Jentel聽Artist Residency Foundation, Brush Creek Foundation for the Arts, and PEN聽Northwest鈥檚 Margery Davis Boyden Wilderness Writing Residency. Kuipers lives聽with her wife and daughter on an island in the Salish Sea, where she is a faculty聽member at Seattle鈥檚 Hugo House and senior editor at Poetry Northwest.听