City Epic

charlotte lucas

Dementia’s got the rats. 

Unless the sidewalk phones 

a cult. Tom Cruise’s 

alien is in a crypto chamber 

waiting for the call 

that tell him to infect 

the keyboards in this downtown

office. The receptionist taps 

morse code on the copier 

machine to summon 

a stripper, while her leaky 

faucet bends like the Hudson. 

Down in the hooded 

swamp there’s Jonestown, 

there’s no dragon throwing up

on the refurbished 

insane asylum. No word 

of lingering. No voice 

worth honoring. The crucible 

sings its prayer to the wisp 

of angel hair escaping 

from the grates that must 

be besotted with the moldy 

refried beans. A reformed hippie

draws circles in the grass

at Central Park and a meteor 

the size of a friendship bracelet

beaded together on a wooden 

floor passes by. It’s not 

a Martian, but is it something 

to believe in? The cliffs have no

cowboy to tame. The sewage 

is a product of the hair 

cut off from an ill pony’s 

mane. The colon has turned up

on its subway track. 

It’s about time for a doctor. 

It’s about time for them 

to be handed a map to a hero. 

But the garden’s gone.

Charlotte Lucas is a junior at Interlochen Arts Academy, where she is the 2022 Virginia B. Ball recipient and has been recognized by the Scholastic Art & Writing Awards. She's published or forthcoming in Poetry Online, DREGINALD, and Eunoia Review.