My Mother Married Bigfoot — A Poem
I don’t think of him much, since he left us, since he ran,
I try not to remember his heavy, bunioned, thumping ways,
His indelible footfalls, like mysteries found upon the moon, cratering
Left over right, into the artificial AstroTurf of our backyard.
Mom doesn’t talk about the night she found him in bed, spread
Like a trampolining trailer-tarpaulin across the neighbor’s wife
She, gasping beneath his weight in blue-lipped passion
He, carefully gnawing the over-chewed carcass of her St. Bernard.
That same night he drank too much moonshine and madness,
He wore a cement mixer in place of a lampshade
Then climbed upon the roof and shouted at the stars, while Mom wept vigil,
The two of them, waiting for the biplanes of sunup to arrive.
We still find remnants of his burlap fur hiding beneath the couch springs, Grandma knits them into indestructible sweaters for me to wear,
Or mittens that can never be lost because she sews them to a rope
That plays hide and seek in my coat sleeves.
