Tom Bradley

Tom Bradley is widely published with various prose pieces in Salon.com making

pretty much everyone uncomfortable. He can be reached at

tom@tombradley.org.

Hugh of Provo

...O deere child, I halsen thee,

in vertu of the hooly Trinitee,

Tel me what is thy cause for to synge,

Sith that thy throte is kut to my semynge?

--Prioress' Tale, 645-8

A disturbed adolescent

daughter of inbred survivalist neighbors

creepy-crawls our backyard with her cat.

She steals our few grape wads

and leaves spoor among the unmown pear mush:

Marie Osmond-brand perfume atomizers,

toy Tampax tubes.

Even allowing for accelerated maturation rates

among rural polygamist females

I estimate she's too old for toys.

Every night, all night, her ashen cat

copulates with everything furred

the neighborhood has to offer

under our bagged air conditioner,

though my wife sleeps clear through.

These two marauders seep

through the drapes in vaporous form

and reintegrate on the skin of my chest

where the larger, more anthropomorphic one

squats in a vulgar position.

Something furred, taloned,

coils around her plump limbs.

She hisses in my ear:

Medieval times are coming to your neighborhood, Tom.

Your Catholic spouse who accepts spirits

and so can dismiss them

will snore through it all. But you,

you aging acid head, with your hoed rows

of secular humanist psilocybin cubensis,

you're in for it.

Walpurgisnacht will erupt

in the dark, not mushrooms.

We will turn into a sweet-singing boy

and you into a Jew.

The fiberglass of your greenhouse

will melt down into a cesspool

and we'll see who seduces whom.

Tom Bradley