Your first thought on waking is water-
logged in musty dream closets
punctuated by a narrator who is
reciting the weather as if it
were a math problem.
You step outside the net of sleep
but you can’t fathom the concepts of ebb 
and flow, and what it would be like to live
on a roof for five days, taking
small sips from a one-gallon jug,
scanning the sky for wind or rescue
while the city, which has always
carried on so, the city, bold stripper
that she is, up to her eyeballs in filth,
while oily water swirls and shapes
float, bobbing almost beautifully
like a surreal painting, nightmare among
branches, there a doll without her clothes,
and then, someone’s shoe.


© 2006 by Linda Back McKay. All rights reserved.