BOGEYMAN: 1950

He was out there running crazy

with his red-hot bulgy eyes rolling around

looking for dirty greedy crabby little girls

like me, oh, just like me.

I lay stark awake

sweating bullets, afraid to look at the window:

surely I would see his wolf-snout,

his bawdy red tongue mashed against the glass.

One night he did come, and stood

at the foot of the bed

while I stared and stared.

He was a beautiful young man, romantically pale,

and what a mouth, what eyes!

When he smiled, what choppers,

white as snow! (Was he

"mad, bad, and dangerous to know?") I'd expected

horns: and that he'd gibber, and bounce off the walls

like an ape. Yet here he was, an angel-haired

sexy prince, giving off heat and light

like a blast furnace.

He whispered:

"Rise and shine, little queenie.

Come to papa, do."

His tongue, that red snapper, flicked

between his lips, and he stood

making loverboy eyes at me.

I thought Trouble trouble trouble

and I said "No no no!"

He leaned closer, so that I could feel

the hot corona of his curls,

and spoke in a voice

of burnt black sugar:

"My lost Rosetta, my little stolen Ruby . . .

you expected a monster mauler, you thought

that somewhere there existed jiggly

tutti-fruttis into which I chopped my pets.

Yet here I am, mild as mother's milk:

here is my kiss, of pulsing silk!"

He paused, then added in business-like tones

"I wish, shortcake, you'd open your eyes,

and then you'd see

my big surprise."

Hard gold lamplight, screams:

my cleanneck aunts

swarm into the room, case the corners:

but I'm alone. "Nightmares," they explain,

"too much pepperbelly food,"

and show me the tight window,

and night pure as a bunny: nothing out there

but dippers of stars.

What then do they make of me

kneeling and putting my lips to the spangled glass

and breathing blood red from the heart

I will kill you

if you don't come back.