A Unicorn Crosses The Brooklyn Bridge

After a mysterious fog had descended on the city:

A bruised black hand with polished nails was found inside

the carcass of a fallen lamb,

Auntie Sue was photographed running naked over rooftops

in her frilled & flowered Easter Bonnet,

A man behind a turtle mask appeared at the out-of-the-closet

party for Brother Timothy from Trinidad,

Grandma Esther’s spirit was seen cloaked in a beaver coat sucking

the toes of an isolated foot,

A female Japanese mannequin wrapped in a plastic shroud was hidden

under a bench in Grand Central Station,

River rats scampered up & down the walls of Trinity Church to tease the

Cardinal – too old & fat for flight,

In Battery Park detectives discovered a woman in mink drowned in a

bathtub with a rubber duck,

Teenage boys & girls fucked all night on the manicured lawn of the

Governor’s summer home on the outskirts of Peekskill,

A mischievous unicorn was spotted prancing with tourists as they crossed

the Brooklyn Bridge at sunrise – on her back a sleeping cheetah

above her head a brace of cooing doves.

Across The Street

an old man walks from his sitting-room to his balcony & begins to cry.

His house faces the western quadrant. We shall never know exactly why.

They keep us this way. Not knowing the contours of our neighbor’s lives.

It’s for the best they tell us & shutter our windows if we inquire too often.

Some say the old man lost his wife last Monday, others, a daughter raped.

Another suggests there was a son – gone bad or maybe lost to war.

The mad woman with one good eye & a crutch tried to trace her lost dog.

On Wednesday she found it hung by its neck from her bronze doorknob.

Nothing is as it seems. Our minister’s not been seen since December.

It’s rumored he left with the laundress who’d run afoul of the general.

If time were right & an offer made, most would find the means to go.

There’ve been those who have / found in the woods eaten by rats.

If it were his wife or daughter or son who will he have left to mourn?

Most have learned to take comfort in the passing of those most dear.

Joaquin’s son Jose was delivered home today in a blue plastic bag.

The VFW plans to reward the grieving family with a traditional fiesta.

To question ‘who holds the reins’ is to ask for confrontation or worse.

Is it best to live quietly in your relegated space & tend your vines?

I’ll never succumb to breast-beating over spilled blood or loss of love.

When my turn comes to walk the ramparts, I’ll do it with eyes wide shut

There’s a time to rage & a time to weep. I’ve lost the will for either.

Bury me soon – before I’m asked to believe again.

The Woman Who Sleeps With The Devil

rises after midnight, smokes a thin cheroot & lines her eyes with the blood of his defiant guests.

She grows orchids in her greenhouse, distills rye whiskey & harvests the neighbor’s cats for stew.

The woman who sleeps with the devil never travels far from home, refuses invitations & paints her windows black.

She will not speak of her past but hints at a rendezvous with an aunt who guards the family bible &

brings her souvenirs: a rabbit’s foot her father cured, her mother’s ashes in a blue porcelain urn, a tape of her sister’s last words.

In winter, when his furnace heats their home, she spins wool to yarn & weaves his exotic capes & shrouds.

The woman who sleeps with the devil has learned to identify renegades, shanghai slavers, generals & executioners.

She’s combed our streets for charlatans, those who sell the trinkets of god’s army to unsuspecting tourists.

They’re a team, last seen wandering our fields hand in hand, she with a shovel & he with his torch & hook.

No one dares climb the hill to their rooms. We suspect anarchy & treason but will never interfere. Their privacy is our salvation.

You’ve Entered Their World