The Northville Review
an online literary journal
Bat Boy Falls for Meghan McCain

Jessie Carty

for the Weekly World News

They keep saying I’m a threat.
Bringing up that time
when I was ten
and I bit the alien baby.
No one bothered to ask me why.
Let me tell you,
He asked for it
when he reached
with his podded
fingers, trying to touch
my ears. I’m tired
of being touched
and prodded, but I’d take it
if I could just once
meet Meghan McCain.
I’d sing her a song. Maybe
“I Want to Hold Your Hand.”
But, I wouldn’t
try to hold
her sweet looking
pink hands
unless she
made the first move.
They won’t even let me
see her at her book signings.
You know she wrote a great book
“My Dad. John McCain.”
I’m always turned away
from her at rallies, even when
I show up empty handed,
pockets turned out, toboggan
pulled down to cover my ears

About the author

Jessie Carty shares a birthday with Florence Henderson and Meg Tilly, and lives in the state where Nina Simone, Ben Folds, and Evan Rachel Wood were born. She is the author At the A & P Meridiem (Pudding House, 2009), The Wait of Atom (Folded Word, 2009), and Paper House (Folded Word, 2010). Jessie is also Managing Editor of Referential Magazine, and invites you to read this poem about a celebrity there.