Alligator Dark

Stiff as a fireman's spray, his urine smacks

into the toilet bowl to spatter against

the two-inch remnant of a cigarette, either

a Camel or Lucky Strike both of which

his parents smoke. Perhaps he is eight.

A chaste delight in this pre-filter era

before Freudian notions could for him

ruin the simplest of pleasures. The butt's

lipstick reddened tip bleeds into the murk-

Take that, Mom!-till the paper splits apart

and tobacco bits skitter off like peewee

lifeboats. The boy zips his pants as his mother

shouts, What's taking you so long? Just

washing up, he calls back, before flushing

the tiny survivors of the stricken liner down,

down to the alligator dark beneath the streets.