Featured Selection of the Month:
October 2003

Peter Pan, the belt of leaves. Feather never stayed long
in the cap. So-called 'computer,' a box wrapped
with tin foil; tuna can tops and beer caps for buttons;
and hats antennaed with unwound coat hangers. (Headware
clinches it.) For a while, food items: carrot with top hat
reserved otherwise for Saint Patrick's Day; green
felt flaps; linebacker-wide shoulder pads and a slendering
tailored fit to the feet. Next year, inspired by a 'Love Boat'
episode: hot dog between glossy buns. I was struck; enlisted assistance
across generations. All we managed was a chocolate milk-brown sheet
cinched at the crown of the head and the ankles with jockstrap elastic;
holes for arms; and two loopy cartoon eyes drawn wide
with a Magnum indelible marker and slits for my own. Mom cried
laughing; Grandma insisted I carry an 'Oscar Meyer' sign
to guarantee recognition by fellow trick-or-treaters, which
I didn't understand: our supermarket didn't carry that brand
til later. The ensemble seemed incomplete, but dark was coming
on and my brother had already rouged his cheeks, donned
a rakish woman's wig, and torn a red pom-pom from his smock.
A clown, he said. He was Raggedy Annish with no visible pants.
There aren't any pictures of that Hallowe'en, no evidence of me
stumbling across neighbor's lawns, nearblind, carrying out the prank
any middle school boy might have drooled about: to come Hallowe'en
as a penis or any erectile object, while I with full parental approval
fell into it–a limpid, pale, unreconciled wiener on the second
most important night of kidhood after Christmas, not counting
the eve of the first or the nacht of the last day of school, due to volume
of edible booty received and consumed. And birthdays. I stuck
to the humanoid form after that: this year, Bob's Big Boy
or Dave Thomas' Wendy, dreaming of silk, full-body dragons.

The Saint Ann's Review
Volume 4 Number 1, Winter/Spring 2003