Seeing Things
by Michelle Herman

Facts about Blakey
by Franz Neumann

The Cryptozoologist Chaperones His
Daughter’s Prom
by Nick Lantz

The Cryptozoologist Chaperones
His Daughter’s Prom
    Nick Lantz

From his post by the punch bowl, he tries to track
her movements through the darkened gymnasium,

but he has already forgotten the color of her dress,
its cut indistinguishable from what a dozen other

girls are wearing. He watches the dancers’ faces
flutter in and out, each caught by dimes of light

from a battered mirror ball. Those faces could belong
to any of the cryptids he has chased: Jersey Devil,

Pope Lick Monster, Sarasota Skunk Ape. No one
looks quite human in the murky room—mouths

too big or small, limbs stretched out of proportion,
their dance steps a nervous stagger of some other

creature’s gait. The illicit cigarettes glowing
by the fire door could be the eyes of the Mothman,

the Bray Road Beast, the Dover Demon.
He guards the drinks from prankish tampering:

hidden flasks of cheap, fumy vodka or, worse, drips
of liquid acid, LSD, PCP. The vice principal

has warned him that anything is possible:
You never know with these kids. He startles

when his daughter and her date lurch out
of the shadows, the elliptical orbit of a slow dance

bringing them finally to his corner of the room.
When the song ends and they break for punch,

he averts his eyes—she has instructed him
to pretend that they are strangers, that he does not

know her. But this is easier than she thinks.
She is a chimera, a lycanthrope, never wholly

one creature and never the same creature
for long. She calls this fitting in, something

he has never understood the need for anyway.
You don’t understand what it’s like, she says,

you don’t know. It’s true, he admits, he doesn’t.
What he does know: The Chupacabra prefers

the blood of nanny goats, the Loveland Frog
exudes the odor of alfalfa, and the Deer Lake

Sasquatch has only four toes. For these claims
he has some evidence: blurry photos, dubious

eyewitness accounts, plaster casts of tracks
in the mud. For his daughter he has even less.

He can’t trust his own memories of her face
or voice. Books she loved as a child were books

some other child loved. The next song cues up
and she and her date disappear into the fold

of bodies. He watches her as she drifts out
across the wooden floor, sure that when she

returns he will not recognize any part of her.