Bogeyman by Jennifer deBie

Jennifer deBie won First Place in the Scary Art Show Poetry Contest (Dublin Arts Collective, curated by Viewless Wings), with her poem “Bogeyman”.

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Bogeyman (After the Texarkana moonlight murders, 1946)
by Jennifer deBie

Shhh

Never talk about the murders
all the people that were got
nor the way that we were failed
by the rangers and the cops.

Never talk about the man
with the feedsack on his head.
You’d know him if you saw him
and you’d likely end up dead.

So don’t talk about the park 
where he shot that couple straight,
nor the house out in the bottoms
where the woman got away.

No, don’t talk about the ranger
sent from Austin city.
How he failed us and he knew it
and the fallout wasn’t pretty.

Called himself the Lone Wolf:
‘wouldn’t leave ‘til he were caught;’
then slipped out eight months later
when the manhunt turned up squat.

But not the manhunt neither,
the widest in the South
and the way it turned up nada
just some rumors and some doubts.

Never talk about the year,
dusty decades dead and gone,
when our people locked their doors
and they kept their porchlights on.

Never talk about the murders,
not a single whispered word
cause he’s out there, he’s still waiting
and believe you me, he heard.

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