The gargoyle on our front door’s name is Giles.
I mean the gargoyle’s name. The front door has no
name itself, far as Lucinda knows
and she’s the expert here, say friend and foe,
about strange creatures’ names. What she has read
confirms my observation: Giles just hangs.
He never moves a muscle. He just hangs
his tongue out in that way he thinks beguiles
the girl gargoyles, who turn away and red,
and act as if collectively they know
Giles looks the part but secretly is faux.
His tongue, for one, is longer than his nose
and that, among his kind, Lucinda knows,
means we’ve a loser latched to where Giles hangs
which makes her count like James Brown two, tree, foe
and knock the front door silly with old Giles
or try to twist his tail to make the no-
tarial tables she says Giles has read
rotate his innards till he’s copper red
from stub of tail to sooty snout-like nose.
The thing you’d think a gargoyle has to know,
who’s passed his way, he doesn’t — ’cause he hangs
the wrong way up to notice. Poor old Giles!
She’d melt him for the metal but he’s faux
and possibly mâché, a paper foe
for stopping demons. What Lucinda’s read
to me about non-starter gargoyle Giles
would fill ten comic books: his cony nose
and fairly flat-arched long left foot that hangs
across his right so long the crease is red
with rust. She says she thinks, or’s read,
in a book by some lost soul yclept Defoe,
that demons fear confronting iron that hangs,
and Giles ís hung: it makes his eyes go red
while tears track rills of oxide down his nose.
Inverted he’s a sight that doth beguile.

Oh, gargoyle moms, before you hatch more Giles,
ensure that no foe hangs around who knows
that Giles ain’t hung the way Lucinda’s read.