SUBURBAN LEGEND


by Michelle Awad

He said,

he saw Bigfoot once,

and he waved, or she, 

he forgot to ask, but anyway,

Bigfoot waved, and then

went on making footprints

in the forest floor, and he

said, he or she or they

smelled

like the wanton wishes

of every stinking mortal

who walks upright and

has opposable thumbs 

and thinks being hairless 

of body makes them 

anything other than

naked. He said,

he saw a UFO once,

that it wasn’t a plane

or a weather balloon, 
or a
reflection in his wire-
framed
glasses, and you

can’t tell him otherwise, 
he said

there were no stars that

evening, but it went away

as quickly as it came, like

love, as

fast as the morning, that

a vapor trail of hope

and possibility was all

that remained, he said he

saw
his mother’s face
in 
the fading.


He left

before I could tell him

I am no 
anomaly, no world

wonder, no mystery,

I am

the place where 

things happen, I am

the setting,

I am the North American

wilderness, the 
night sky,

the expanse of the 
universe,
endless, the lack of 
oxygen,
the silence so 
deep and vast

and empty it’s the closest 

we’ll ever know to the absolute,

ultimate, big, scary
 


Nothing.



I am Loch Ness.

There’s a monster

inside me

swimming around

that some people 
claim

to have seen.