On first reporting the strange light over A gate swung open and a giant spoon-
Truro, I replied to 911: "Blah! You’re just butt alien came out of a spaceship
a dishfaced mud fence anyway!" wearing an outfit not unlike my red
and black frock.
A stunted forked-tongue suburbanite I was clothed in everything but a
popped into an Amtrak train, naked as woman’s despair as I hopped onto
Popeye’s lust, and ordered me to step my own insanity, trying to outsmart
along. all the planets at once.
Every dumb thing on Earth gave up, I waited to run into the real life hippo-
myself included. It was time to walk madly potamus of another existence, where
into Nostradamus’ dream. I just knew rain would be solid and
my heart, a small test tube.
Another time I dangled from a cliff, my Perfectly calm, Brahms calm, andante,
rubbery arms stretching, my heart beating intermezzo calm, I murdered every good-
a rumba, a boogie, a jittery jitterbug. girl instinct anyone ever put inside
me.
It was like the time I saved a crazed devil- I shed my white boa, kept perfectly still,
woman against my will—she wore a red thinking what an Anglophile I’d become,
butterfly mask and spoke in languages and suddenly: Bluto/Brutus/Whatever-
other than English. His-Name-Was stood seductively before
me.
All the small beautiful boys whose names Once I’d made up my mind to never
I knew by heart vanished into rescue-less watch another quiz show, to let my looks
mode, preening and forgetting I was even go, to just not care anymore—they came
there, never mind in jeopardy. running, too little too late, a twisted bag
of thwarted yang and simpering
machismo.