a long story

there were dinosaurs. everything was the same other than
that. people still got up at dawn and drove to work.
housewives still went shopping. on hot afternoons they still
slowed in the frozen food section. occasionally someone
would get squashed by a diplodocus or gored by a
triceratops, but what were we to do about it? they were
already extinct. so we kept going. i asked my mother once,
“what was it like before the dinosaurs?”. she tried to
explain, but her words made no sense. that night i dreamed
of meteors volcanoes hurricanes tsunamis. i dreamed of
many terrible things i could not describe in the morning.


from the November 2005 issue of High Altitude Poetry

more of my poems from HAP here.