In her own words...
"All Hallows' Eve"
2004
Be perfect, make it otherwise.
Yesterday is torn in shreds.
Lightning's thousand sulfur eyes
Rip apart the breathing beds.
Hear bones crack and pulverize.
Doom creeps in on rubber treads.
Countless overwrought housewives,
Minds unravelling like threads,
Try lipstick shades to tranquillize
Fears of age and general dreads.
Sit tight, be perfect, swat the spies,
Don't take faucets for fountainheads.
Drink tasty antidotes. Otherwise,
You and the werewolf: newlyweds.
About this work
“All Hallows’ Eve” was first published in The New Yorker, November 1, 2004, p. 102. It is also included in Dorothea Tanning's book, Coming to That: Poems, New York: Graywolf Press, 2011, p. 32, and may not be reprinted without the publisher's permission.