by Brett Rutherford
1
Bad Dingo rides
the Staten Island ferry dusk till dawn,
clinging to rail,
nestling an all-night tumescence,
hard at the sight of the robed lady,
vast, unapproachable.
He’s stalking her.
He bides his time.
Some night
there’d be a fog,
a power failure.
He’d come up behind her,
he’d prod the small
of her spine
with his imperious knife,
jostle her bronze buttocks
with his ardent flesh-prod.
She’d drop the tablet;
the torch would sputter.
He’d push her off her pedestal.
Bad Dingo would give it to her good
the way he did to other white ladies
in parks and stairwells and subway cars.
This would be the rape of all rapes,
the pinnacle of his career,
the ultimate boast:
“See that goddess
flat on her back in the harbor —
she ain’t so proud now
since someone had her,
made her moan.
Bad Dingo had her,
stuck it to the Statue,
white lady Liberty!”
2
In Chinatown,
Mrs. Wang mounts
a quiet
rebellion
against the ways of the elders.
She has done all
her mother asked her:
married the boy
the matchmaker ordained,
bore sons and daughters
in regular order,
burned joss and incense
at every altar
sent ghost gold and peaches,
phantom cars and televisions,
Hong Kong Hell dollars
to the teeming, greedy dead.
Now her husband travels,
has mistresses, won’t talk
about his gambling.
Her children are gone,
married to foreign devils.
Her round-eyed grandchildren
will not learn Mandarin,
nor will they send joss wealth
to her once she is dead.
A dream-voice told her, "Live,
and make each day
count as a year."
So she becomes a whirlwind,
sells off her jade and porcelain,
cleans out the savings account,
her husband knew nothing about
buys an airline ticket for San Francisco —
and after that, who knows?
She pawns the statuette
of pearly white Kuan-Yin,
the Goddess of Mercy
whose only blessing
was endless childbirth
and wash this, iron-that.
On a whim she buys another
to take its place at her bedside:
a foot-high Statue of Liberty
with batteries and glowing torch.
She leaves it for her husband,
her wedding ring
on its spiky crown.
3
Today two New York titans
switch places.
A grumpy Green Liberty
strides up Fifth Avenue.
She crushes pedestrians
in verdigris splatter.
Her sandaled feet
send buses flying,
kiosks shattering.
Her great head turns
among the office towers. She reaches in,
pulls screaming executives
through razor-edge panes,
undresses them
with her copper fingers,
discards them one by one
to the pavement
twenty stories below.
The man she wants
is not among them. He’s got
to be a real American,
one of those Arrow shirt models,
blond, and a screamer,
a yielding but unwilling male
under her stern metallic nails.
The more he'd cry outPut me down!
the more she would like him.
Uptown, she finds one —
a tousle-headed messenger,
Viking-blond and thin as a rail —
she scoops him up —
his empty bike totters
and is instantly stolen.
Imperious male that he is,
he bellows Put me down!
She cups him in one palm,
drops her tablet,
rolls up her sleeves,
and starts the painful ascent
of the Empire State Building.
Up there, they would be alone together.
She'd show him the top of the world.
Downtown
on Liberty Island,
a great ape replaces
the green goddess.
King Kong wields a torch,
incinerates all passing freighters,
inspects all passenger ships
to toss away all
who do not meet his standards.
He hurls great boulders skyward,
warns off incoming airplanes
with a shake of his might fists.
Homeland Security Kong,
appointed by the President himself,
he guards the harbor now.
He is a real American
and he shouts his slogans:
America First! Stay out!
Go home!
No foreigners allowed!
— c. 1987, revised 2026
