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.