21 April

SESTINA: URBAN LEGEND
1999

Here’s how I heard
it. Some rugrat let all these alligators
loose even though the babysitter
threatened him within an inch of his measly life. She recalled the beehive
incident, had been trained to stay away from a Corvette
with a stain in the back seat, or a man with a hook.

So this ordinary creaker, except for the hook,
he was the one who heard
the sound like a Corvette
moulting, only it was really alligators
slinking in the sewers, a militia like a beehive,
but the babysitter,

who might have saved the city, that babysitter
was otherwise occupied. She was dialing 9-1-1, cradling the hook
in her boyfriend’s neck, every hair in her perfect beehive
keeping its iron grip, while she heard
the ambulance wail toward Lovers Leap and another sound that might be alligators,
which she ignored, preoccupied as she was with body fluid leaking all over the Corvette.

She coveted that Corvette,
and if her boyfriend bit the big one, the babysitter
was hoping she’d inherit his wheels and not his collection of squeaky toy alligators,
and she kind of wanted the hook,
too, she’d heard
they make attractive accessories for a beehive.

She’d never had a swarm of bees take residence in her beehive,
but she had seen a few back seats of a few Corvettes.
There were the obligatory ominous urban legend lectures she’d heard
involving various bubbleheaded babysitters,
and if they got the hook,
well, maybe they deserved it. Meanwhile alligators

were issuing from the city’s every orifice, alligators
the size of freight trains, and she was touching up her beehive.
The man with the hook
was leering at the Corvette
which he wanted more than the babysitter,
and him licking his scabby lips was the last thing she heard.

That’s how I heard it. The alligators
ate the babysitter, beehive
and all. The authorities never recovered the Corvette or the hook.