With Pink Eye

I want to dress
as a white lie,
a unicorn, a schoolgirl,
all of the above, blended.
Prefer the magical over
the deformed, lopsided,
or undead.

If this holiday is ruled
by the amygdala,
I am raging against fear
with glitter, that small pinpoint
in the brain, all lit up.

I smudge
pigment powder in oh!
around each eye,
the hot itch of a nineteen-seventies
polyester power suit.

What are you?

a. A 1976 secretary with pink eye
b. Stevie Nicks, the heavy years, with pink eye
c. A new wave raccoon
d. Lazy, with pink eye

You are dressed like an emergency.
Hold test results in your fist.
Rain shit-coloured toffee in
waxy orange-yellow wrappers over
your stubborn zombie face.
You actively haunt,
an appetite for dynamic disruption of truth.
You can’t argue with a spreadsheet.

I pink-eye you when the fire alarm rings,
the dance floor empties,
the fire trucks provide a spotlight,
the scrappy underage Britney drag queen
and I toss her Cabbage Patch Kid baby.
You smoke while I pursue perfect quips,
smear pink across your jaw.

—ZOE WHITTALL

(Originally published Halloween, 2008.)