The Scream, by Loretta Diane Walker

The Scream, by Edvard Munch (Norway). 1893.

The Scream
 
 If you let go of your Halloween
peanut and candy corn coated breath,
it will become a ghost in the city of Odessa.
Not like that cheery chubby Casper cartoon
or those grotesque movie ghouls.
Rather a spirit of relief floating in an October chill.
Is this how we make the world small?
Through breath and air?
Maybe the redwoods in California
will smell the sweet aroma of your release.
 
If you dress yourself in a coat of curiosity
while driving around these overcrowded concrete streets,
you will see the city’s dress is summer green
with a hem of frightened yellow, drab brown
and a collar of panicked orange.
Munch mimics fall with the same hues
in Der Schrei der Natur.
This contorted face he sketched
in his whirlwind of colours
is no more terrifying than my dreams
rummaging through the darkness, fishing for stars.
Is this what fear looks like,
a distorted jaw and murky shadows?
If so, does a violet scream joy?
 
If we wait until tomorrow to remove our masks,
truth will follow us into November.
You will see beneath this flesh I am a pole.
Your words lean against everything you once feared.

Loretta Diane Walker

This poem was first published in Ilya's Honey Literary Journal.

Loretta Diane Walker, a multiple Pushcart Nominee, and Best of the Net Nominee, won the 2016 Phyllis Wheatley Book Award for poetry, for her collection, In This House (Bluelight Press).  Loretta was named “Statesman in the Arts” by the Heritage Council of Odessa. Her work has appeared in various literary journals and anthologies including, River of Earth and Sky, Her Texas, and Concho River Review. She has published four collections of poetry. Her most recent collection is Desert Light, Lamar University Press. Her manuscript Word Ghetto won the 2011 Bluelight Press Book Award. Naomi Shihab Nye states, “Loretta Diane Walker writes with compassionate wisdom and insight—her poems restore humanity.”