Cronies
by Nancy Brewka-Clark
Drawn to Salem by the tales
of Nathaniel Hawthorne,
I bought a flimsy sheet
of plastic imprinted with
the gaudy image of a witch
when I was young and single,
living in a shabby apartment
with my own familiar, a
little mutt named Edith.
Inevitably I married
a direct descendant of
Susannah Martin, hanged
July 19, 1692.
We bought a house.
Fifty years passed.
Kept in a drawer, the witch
materializes every Halloween,
up at sunset, down at midnight,
ever more creased and wrinkled
just like the one who hangs her.
NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR: I’ve tried my hand at every genre of writing and love it all. Age, time and distance vanish at the tap of a key.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR: The winner of the New England Poetry Club’s 2019 Amy Lowell prize, Nancy Brewka-Clark began her writing career as features editor for a daily newspaper chain on Boston’s North Shore. Her poems, short stories, drama, and nonfiction have been published by The Boston Globe, The North American Review, Red Hen Press, University of Iowa Press, and Silver Birch Press among others. Her debut poetry collection Beautiful Corpus was published by Kelsay Books in March 2020.
Silver Birch Press 