Science Fiction

It must be a joke—cinnamon style.

I think it was a dream I was having;

a collection of striped, dotted and plaid-sewn

lovers with serrated-edged teeth and strange smiles

to which I was handmaid.

It happens when it rains.

All six rise from the wet dirt

like cherry tree, like lime soda fizz, like sex

they come. It happens.

Each is the stem of a prayer;

each is a leaf curled into me,

then out into the rain that rains so hard

that I'm riverside now, filled with prayers and plants and

Ph.D. degrees. But there is no rain, really, no river or storm.

There are simply hot, dry plains, expanses of gray,

and myself alone, slinking across them toward

someone, or something, I do not know.