I met a troll under the Verrazzano Bridge
and asked him to let me pass
He sneered, then farted. “You?
We don’t want your kind.”
Death stood on the catwalk, took long drags off her Newport, not watching as I slunk away.
The witch of the Williamsburg Bridge told me to go fuck myself
when I asked her for a date on the other side.
“You can’t afford me.”
She was right, so I didn’t argue.
I didn’t think she would always be right, so I didn’t beg.
Death leaned against the oldest graffiti, adding her own tag.
I caught the bus back to Sheepshead Bay
And asked for advice from the mermaids who hung out under the pier
They bent their heads to confer. Bubbles rose and popped against the boards under my feet.
“Try not to be so ugly!” They called as they swam to open water, plumes of iridescent scum trailing behind.
The werewolves at the base of the Brooklyn Bridge told me to stop with the shortcuts, put some lipstick on, and use the feet god gave me.
Death pedaled past me on a gold Schwinn,
So I trudged instead through the Brooklyn Battery Tunnel.
Death rode ahead, banana seat speckled with ashes, refusing
—to offer me a ride—
though there was enough space if I held her tight.
I watched her steer into a vent, headed for a picnic with the soldier ghosts on Governor’s Island
It took decades to lose the grease and grime and soot.
Sort of. Some stuck, carved “no crossing” lines
over my mouth, down into my cleavage.
And finally, the George Washington Bridge where a dragon rose from the river,
steam rolling from her nostrils across the Hudson
But she didn’t stop me.
Hanging off a cable closer to the Fort Lee side
Death pointed
and I jumped
To skip across the bloated joints of the dead
who commuted before.
 |
Anne Perez is a lifelong New Yorker who explores the extraordinary of the ordinary through fiction and occasionally poetry. Work has been published in LampLight, The Northwest Review, Roi Fainéant, and others. She can be found sporadically on BlueSky @MrsFringe. | |