Monster
I stand in the drainage field behind my house,
which mounds into a small hill pinioned
with slender trees dropping weight for winter's regimen.
Their branches, bone-thin wings of angels.
I remember when we used to drink
on our old playground after dark
until the cops chased us away.Beyond the hill, in the dun colored stalks
of dead cattails, a heavy thing drags through the leaves.
I yell. It doesn't scare. Is it the black bear
that made the neighbor's kid wet his pants
when he heard these young trunks snap?I close my eyes. I've heard this sound before.
That wacko—pacing the gated bowels
of New York's Port Authority, newspaper
twined to his feet—muttering about pound cake.
He had made the best, sold thousands from his shop.
Who don't like pound cake? I don't. But he grabbed
a fistful of my shoulder, and I was taught always
to be terrified of those stranger than me.
Jason Tandon's poems have appeared in many journals, including Poet Lore, Euphony, the Bitter Oleander, Del Sol Review, Regarding Arts & Letters, Folio, Columbia Poetry Review, and Pavement Saw. He holds degrees in English from Middlebury College, and is completing his MFA at the University of New Hampshire where he teaches literature and composition. Since August 2005 he has served as an intern poetry editor at the Paris Review.
