ABOUT

CONTENTS

EDITORIAL

ARCHIVE

LAGNIAPPE

MAST

SUBMISSIONS

Perhaps We Are Not Dreaming
by Rich Ives

The air is clean and cold. No one is allowed
to cry today. The children are playing
Sanitation Engineer. They want uniforms.
They want recycling. They want time off for
cookies and milk. But life is already passing
and now they want to be “Circus Bimbos.”
My God! What have they been dreaming?

And now Gramma is baking a cake. She forgets
the eggs. She forgets
the flour. She falls asleep. She forgets
the cake.

When it’s time for dinner, the bathroom
fills with children. No one
can get the truth off their hands.

Arriving later than they know, father’s
Friends of the Flat Earth decry the future.
The cornered badgers of science
escape into common knowledge.

Near dusk mother fills a wooden bowl
with fruit and fresh rose petals.
The world was exciting once.

Now the children are sleeping.
They are playing I Don’t Have To
and Smelly Farts in the Schoolyard
and Whimper and Drool. They are not
just waiting. They are not
escaping. Try not to misunderstand
their happiness.