I.
Men in suits paced
behind her on the sidewalk.
A black car with extra antennae
idled half a block
from her bus-stop.
All night long a car
like a hopped-up V.W.
revved its engine
every twenty minutes
and rumbled up the road.
"This is not happening,"
her therapist assured her.

II.
The interrogators asked,
"Who are you?" In her one lamp
lit room, she sat on a chair, back
to the window. They could have shot her
from the street, twelve floors below.
"I am a poet," she said. "I absorb,
filter, reflect and reinvent the wind,
pot holes in the street, cigarette
wrappings, city buildings. I tell bits
and pieces to make it one peace.
I am not a prophet.
To be the Second Coming
is too much
responsibility."


Copyright 1995, Crysta Casey


Crysta Casey is published in Seattle Review, Fine Madness, Monthly Review, and other journals. Her first book is Heart Clinic (Bellowing Ark Press, 1993).