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Gabriel DeCrease is a graduate of the Poetry Program at Allegheny College. He earned his M.F.A. at The University of Pittsburgh. He was awarded the 2005 Mulfinger Award for Poetry and first-prize in the 2007 Edwin Ochester/Academy of American Poets Award. His poems and reviews have appeared in The French Creek Journal, Paradigm-3, Word Riot, Mudlark, Fawlt, and The Cortland Review.
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Certain Histories
That part of me which I had the power of projecting,
had lately been much exercised and nourished.
—Robert Louis Stevenson
Uncle Nikos is holed-up, April Fool's Day 1953,
in the washroom of The Hazelton Hotel office
with the bankroll from Othello's Meats wrapped
in a butcher's apron and the butcher
held hostage with his own cleaver.
When the deputy asks, Uncle Nikos
cannot think up a single demand
or condition for surrender,
then gives up without protest.
The Quest of Offero, in which every step
must be tested, and a young boy
or the whole Earth
sits on the giant's shoulders.
Offero will be renamed Christopher,
as gift for having borne Christ—
faithfully and accidentally.
Somewhere in the stacks
at the Emerson School Library
The Library of Alexandria is going up in smoke
in my fourth-grade history book
that contains a passage about a wonder,
debunked, I can still recite accurately:
It was not long before the supposed petrified giant
was exposed as a fake, a statue made of gypsum.
The attraction then became the forgery,
and visitors flocked, just the same,
and paid handsomely to see it.
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