Crime Against Spring

Each neighborhood has its perpetrators

The Butcher of Bay Ridge
The Elmhurst Executioner
The Gansevoort Girdler
The Mastermind of the Moshulu Massacre

The victims
Twenty-three hydrangea bushes
Twelve Chinese dogwoods
Seven roses of Sharon

Four sassafras
Three butterfly bushes
Two sycamore maple trees
My favorite magnolia

Winter-weary
We sit next to the Ghandi statue
And bemoan the destruction
Of our sanctuary


Anna Steegmann, born in Germany in 1954, has lived in New York City since 1980. Her stories and essays and have appeared in The New York Times ,[sic], Promethean, Epiphany,  Boomer Women Speak, as well as several German newspapers.  Her translations will be published in 2008 with W.W. Norton, The Absinthe Literary Review and Dimension.2