The Brontosaurus Incident

by Gerry LaFemina

Every girl wants a pony, someone once said, but since this is the post-modern era (soon to be the post-post-modern era) her wish for a pony is ironic. My desire to get her one is earnest but impractical: where in Manhattan would she keep a pony, even one named The Brontosaurus Incident. She’d call it Bronto for short. Imagine her rubbing a curry comb through its hair, working the dandy brush. Imagine her riding it: it’s a small animal and it can’t go fast enough. Pronto, Bronto, she declares. I know it’s hard to picture this: I can only do it because I’ve seen her on the carousel at Coney Island, circling and circling as mermaids watched, circling until we were both dizzy, vertiginous, or else, maybe we were fine, and it was the whole world that wobbled as it spun.

Gerry LaFemina is the author of six books of poems including 2011’s Vanishing Horizon, two books of prose poems, and the story collection Wish List. In 2013, a new prose poem collection, Notes for the Novice Ventriloquist, and a novel, Clamor. The recipient of numerous awards and honors, he directs the Center for Creative Writing at Frostburg State University, where he is an associate professor of English. He divides his time between Maryland and New York.