The air has split
open, and
the townspeople
are dropping
in heaps.
They’re falling
asleep:
belly-down
on swings,
splayed on
the sun-specked
riverbank,
hunched over
on park benches.
Snores push
upwind, around
the brick
outhouse, onto
the streets. No
one’s awake to
notice.
Outside a house, sixteen tiny flags still line the front lawn,
leaning in the wind like sixteen tiny matadors
swaying, not stepping, on beat.
Inside, a baby sits before a silent television,
crumpling a newspaper in her fists just for the sound.
From afar, the town is a nova crackling,
almost vanishing, reappearing, on the horizon.
Mia Hood is a doctoral student and graduate instructor at Teachers College, Columbia University and Assistant Professor of Practice at Relay Graduate School of Education. She teaches teachers. Previously, she taught middle school students how to read better and write better. She keeps a blog called Dinosaur Sweaters.
