-Agatha on the lam-

                   It was Agatha Pettruci who lived

                   on the second floor of the initial
                   three-tenement, brown-shingled beauty,

                   one floor beneath Ernest and Julia Carocelli

                   and one floor above us, the D'Elia family;
                   father, mother, the one set of maternal grandparents,
                   an older sister, me and a younger brother.
                   (pick the parakeet or cat from the drop-down
                   menu, now available to subscribers)
                   I was the middle child of the family
                   and one could say that Agatha was the middle child
                   of the house on Bedford, officially designated as 1017.

                   Agatha was as old as my old grandmother
                   and as young women might have crossed the Atlantic together
                   during the earliest years of the turn to the 20th century.

                   while visiting the first-floor one night,
                   and after coffee and anisette cookies,
                   old Agatha began asking questions of, then began
                   searching for "la piccole persone"––
                   the "little people" she believed were living inside
                   our first television set; fatso cabinet, small screen,
                   and with supplied antenna fully extended, looked like
                   what robots looked like in the early 1950s. 

                   It was my father who found the absurdity
                   of Agatha's heavy-handed exploration, humorous.
                   but as evening fell more deeply
                   toward the hour of anticipated patterns,
                   Agatha became increasingly agitated after several attempts
                   to locate the little people frolicking inside the set, failed.

                   as often happens with stories to be told, it's only now
                   occurring to me that Agatha Pettruci, second floor of three,
                   might have looked upon us as a legion of demons that night,
                   and had she been in better shape, killed us,––
                   then climbed the stairs to the third floor and once there,
                   because they had a television set complete with its own
                   "piccole persone" killed Ernest and Julia Carocelli, too.

                    Quequechan 1950.

                    1952? 1951.