four poems

by Liz DeGregorio

Nightmare

It started with noises in the attic,

A certain kind of shuffling

As if friendly ghosts were adjusting themselves

For a good night’s sleep,

Just as we were.

Then there was a dark patch,

Stretched across several feet of

The ceiling of our bedroom

As if the ghosts had suddenly turned blue,

Growing heavier and darker with

Upset and discontent.

Next cracks appeared, cracks that we could see

Every night as we tried/failed to ignore the shuffling

Sounds, seeming to grow more urgent,

There was a whole entity above our heads,

Haunting us, and we thought about moving.

Suddenly, there was a creak,

Louder than any of the shuffling,

And in the darkness, we saw thick ropes

Of python fall out of the ceiling,

And we felt the weight of the snakes

Hit our prone bodies, pounds and pounds

Of writhing panicked animals.

Now, we sleep underneath a patched ceiling,

The smell of new paint light in the air.

Our attic is clean and empty.

We have a new comforter.

Still, every night, we stay awake, our eyes

Glittering wide with fear

In the dark silence.

Real life

It’s the snake wriggling on the carpeted bedroom floor, everything gray and dark blue at midnight. And it’s just a trick of the moonlight -- it’s a rubber snake purchased from the gift shop at the Bronx Zoo, not the actual snakes that we saw slithering over rocks under a heat lamp in the Reptile House. But we are five and do not know the difference, just as the earthworms we dig up from the leafy yard and drape like tiny scarves over our fingers seem more like toys than creatures like us, with families that will worry if they’re gone too long. The one snake we did see, outside the confines of the damp, dark Reptile House, was a tiny green garter snake, frantically coiling and uncoiling as it tried to free itself from our cat’s knife teeth. The cat looked straight ahead, stone-faced, with diamond eyes that didn’t care about the snake’s family, or even our family.

Summer

In a flower bed, a snake

pops out of the ground:

her cool length passes almost silently

over the soil, as she ignores the

gardening tools, the busy hands, the bugs.

Her only goal is to feel the sun on     

her body, the warmth, but only for    

a brief, brief moment.

Then she slips underground,

leaving the earth above undisturbed.

Serpent’s Rebuttal

The snake looked out at the girl: miserable.

The man she was with was: animated,

his words muffled through the thick glass separating them,

but she was silent.

She’d nod her head or tilt it up thoughtfully,

but try as she might,

the expression on her face is muted horror.

The snake knows better than to take offense

– after all, he knew his reputation.

Humans never wanting to take responsibility for their actions …

blaming him, his cousins, his parents, his children.

One snake was the same as any other snake.

There were a couple bad apples (one might say)

but this snake only wanted to

live in peace.

He felt bad for the girl, who was scared and

didn’t know how to say it.

He wondered at the man: so dense, so thoughtless –

he’d take a girl with a snake phobia

to a rattlesnake museum.

The snake rose up the glass:

trying to look at her

trying to catch her eye

even though he knew

it was unlikely.

He thumped against the glass,

trying to lighten the mood,

but the girl shrank away from him.

It figures, he thought.

But at least he had tried to understand her.

At least he wanted to know what she was feeling.

Photo of Liz DeGregorio

BIO: Liz DeGregorio (she/her) is a poet, writer and editor living in New York City. Her work has appeared in Electric Lit, The Rumpus, Catapult, Bowery Gothic, Lucky Jefferson, ANMLY, Little Fruits, BUST, Ghouls Magazine, OyeDrum, Blink Ink, Dread Central and other publications. She has also performed at the award-winning storytelling series Stranger Stories. She has both Scorpio and Sagittarius stelliums, which probably tells you even more than you wanted to know.