Let me show you around this
pretty little city known for its creativity
in its arts and its crimes. 

Look up, see the Stout Clock Tower;
that ten foot “S” was stolen, floated
down the river by a group of graduating
construction majors, a secret unshared
for thirty-nine years until a few of the crew,
now pillars, came clean, created a fund to replace it. 

Here’s where an elephant on the lam
from Shrine Circus crossed the square,
headed off toward Sanna Dairy following a whiff
of chocolate pudding, a brief Bacchanalia
in this usually sensible elephant’s predictable life. 

Over there the art department where a student
whose last name means hero took performance art too far
placing 18 pipe bombs in mail boxes across five states
hoping to create a satellite smiley face of explosions:
an idiosyncratic  recipe of gunpowder, BBs, nails,
paper clips, and Christmas tree bulbs,
a present no one should have opened. 

Finally the neighborhood where
a sweet-faced thong thief stole nearly 900
pairs of panties, a spree culminating
Thanksgiving Break when comely coeds
returned to find their panties gone.
Sometimes I wonder if something’s in the water.

Sandra Lindow is a two time winner of the SFPA Convergence annual poetry slam. She is the longest serving regional vice president of the Wisconsin Fellowship of Poets. She lives on a hilltop in Menomonie, Wisconsin. For more by Sandra, look here.