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Susie Main walked down the street,
Not a word to say, instead she growled,
A gruesome growl ready to strike her prey,
Every one knew Susie Main, the oddest girl in town,
She was mean to say the least,
And today she was the meanest,
Her footsteps pound the ground,
We all knew she meant, “Get out of my way!”
From the tall apartment buildings behind the walkway,
Our heads peaked out in fear,
This is the worst we have ever seen her,
The question shouted to our ears,
came directly from our fears,
W H A T I S S H E G O I N G T O D O?
The question lingered longer,
Our hearts shook more in fear,
We were SCARED, PETRIFIED!
And not just silly, sibling, baby whine - I’m scared,
We were SCARED right out of our pants!

She walked with rock fist raised to her chest.
If I didn’t know better I’d say she was a he,
Her arm muscle looked like a baseball behind the tee,
She wore a red shirt and black pants,
Had she killed a bull today? I wondered silentlee,
The short spaghetti brown hair had a boy’s cut,
Parted in the middle, neat and short at both ends,
Oh but the face! I pray never to see that face again,
Even a bulldog couldn’t look any meaner,
More wrinkles than a prune,
Her lips bunched like paper in the middle,
GROWL!
Her nose was wide and flat,
Her nostrils flared back and forth,
A mile away the leaves danced too, on this hot summer day,
W H A T I S S H E G O I N G T O D O?

One brave moment,
While we stood fearfully talking with our eyes,
The girl of my dreams, stepped in front of Susie Main,
Oh no, what is she doing?!
It’s as if she were pointing a loaded gun to her head,
Jane, don’t you know it’s loaded, Jane?
She didn’t move away, didn’t flinch,
Then, then I knew,
That the girl I so deeply loved, wasn’t very smart,
And I would never,
hear her say that she loves me too.

The neighborhood kids watched in silence,
I held my breath so hard my stomach cramped,
Then Jane said, still a statue but with trembling fear,
“Susie Main, you’re so mean and ugly!
Why are you in such a bad mood today?”
The Earth could have split in two,
the Sun could have dropped from above,
All were more kinder,
Than what Susie Main did to Jane Crane,
In an instance to a second Susie Main let out the biggest ROAR!
It was like the lowest loudest trombone combined with an elephant’s shout,
And then, her neck stretched like an Ostrich,
Susie’s mouth suddenly leaped and blocked the heavens over Jane,
In a blink of eye,
Jane Crane’s little toe,
Stuck from Susie Mains proud, long, blood red mouth,
It was a mouthful, for Susie Main,
But she could handle it, all of us knew she could,
We watched her in a terrified surprise,
As she chewed twice and then no more.

I didn’t waste any time to flee,
My life is too precious, and extremely dear,
Plus I’d rather not be where Jane soon will be,
I told my brain,
To tell my legs to go,
Go as fast as wind, don’t you stop!
And I ran,
So fast I could have outran thunder,
Breathing a lifetime, was my only request,
Down the sidewalk opposite of Susie,
Then turned the corner and stopped,
Stopped to let my legs rest and check if I was a fowl in the
supermarket,
No, I saw the others had ran home,
Then I heard and saw the rarest thing I’ve ever seen,
Susie Main spoke, as if she were speaking to me,
(or so it seemed)
“Don’t ask me when,
Don’t ask me where,
Don’t even ask me who and how,
I’m just in a bad mood and it just IS,
So leave me alone, don’t mess with me!
Or suffer the same as she,”
And Susie Main smiled and went away.

I read (actually the librarian read to us “The New Kid on the Block.” It’s a poem from the anthology “Where the Sidewalk Ends.” I thought it was so neat in the fourth grade so it became a myth in my head. This was last modified 5/28/1998