Gramp arrives lugging his beeg ol’ sack of corner-store moonshine— streets drip neon ichor, blood-orange crosswalks winking at midnight traffic.
“Lolly, sugar, hold yer breath,” he rasp-whispers, as skyscrapers sprout black barnacles along the skyline’s ribcage— windows gaping like toothless mouths.
His pocket watch ticks wormholes into the sidewalk’s stale vomit, where pigeons bleed oil and rust— clattering their hollow bones against curb’s edge.
He tips his hat—an old straw halo, threads unraveling into ghostly tethers— and every loose fiber craves the city’s roar, hungry for pavement’s sweet decay.
Lolly waves from the coffee-cart kingdom, her porcelain cup crowned in froth that sighs like a drowned cantaloupe— she smiles, all tater-bag grin and calcium frailty.
Urbana, my bones quake under yer heartbeat— do ya feed the Shatagee Woods Wendigo roots of local Chateaugay Lake folk like me?
Neon vines coil lamp-posts; crows with jackhammer claws nest in traffic lights— their caws splice the dawn into a jagged lullaby.
Grandpa dips a finger in his moonshine jar, tastes the city’s sour gumbo— brine of lost dreams and rusted hubcaps— he calls it “progress,” winks like a guillotine.
He hums a cornfield hymn, each note a rotted ear of corn splitting open in the breeze— kernels crawling off like tiny maggots.
Lolly’s apartment: a glass coffin on stilts— inside, she tends her houseplants— saguaro cacti that drip black sap, aspirin pills nestled in their spines.
Gramp, codger prophet of the plow, tips his jar to the city: “Here’s to you, concrete leviathan— may your gutters run thick with barnstorm.”
In Urbana’s clamor, his old heart rattles— a scarecrow’s ribbed cage twisting in wind, and Lolly, child of steel and blossom, carries him home on wheels of nightmare.
What mysteries of Chateaugay Lake haunt you?