Luca Penne		Atlantic Avenue On Atlantic Avenue I rattle along like a junkman’s horse-drawn wagon. A big truck backing up beeps. The asphalt smells hot underfoot. The mermaid of my dreams emerges from the sewer, clutching a rat in her teeth. She spits the half-dear creature at my feet and confesses a fever of love for me. I can accept a rat but not her love. I explain by explaining how city life has always pitted my self-effacement against my urge to kill. But the mermaid looks so winsome with her kelp-hair concealing her breasts. I should help her hobble on her fish-tail to my flat where I keep my coral reef pornography. She’d find much to admire in my collection of squid-ink Rorschach drawings. She enjoy being whipped with the tentacles of a giant squid. But the big truck beeps and beeps and my mermaid ducks back down the sewer as the hot asphalt sprawls over the potholed street, filling even the minor flaws and smoothing over a million little sins.