Tugboat Annie in Stiletto Heels
A chimera of Anne Waldman and Bernadette Mayer
She lets the owl fly from her gold lame’ cuff.
Wet sheets snap in the wind.
The dormouse uncurls in his nest
in the ear, gets hit
with the seraglio pillow
hooked on the pterodactyl’s thumb.
Shoe salesmen walk arm in arm
down the aisle, see her, there
by the waters of Babylon
they lay down and weep…
The tap tap of stiletto heels pursues
Manifest Destiny.
The Amazon City Police find a loaded snub nose .38
and drag the river for trenchcoat and fedora.
Under a hot light
the castrato talks soprano to his God the Gestapo Buddha—
Listen to that stoolie squeal!
And in this corner
Tugboat Annie steps out in her spangled pumps,
tender as a switchblade knife,
and mugs Sappho for spare Pleiades.
Tugboat Annie rings the engine room
for full revolutions,
and the screws churn the bottom mud
as she tows a selah scow
and noses an iceberg into New York Harbor.
Dana Pattillo
