by Gerald Yelle
“Next verse same as the first.” — Herman’s Hermits
Of course we had an alternate reality.
We had to know what it was like to
kill and be killed. I always wanted to
do the killing till I saw what it was
like on the other side of the law.
It’s not like the anchor the family
weighed us down with or the cotton
they swaddled us in. It’s more like
a future full of earbuds and goggles.
Like a sad kind of winter when it’s
raining snow. I wanted to take all
the books that tempt us to burn each
other and burn them instead. But
if the desire to hurt each other was
in us to begin with then a book is
less cause than catalyst. Soon it’ll
rain fire and we’ll long for dirty
snow again. Even wet snow looks
good when all you can do is wait
for the next meal. And its flakes
are full of shadows and the books are
gray with ash and full of colored
drawings and titles like “Tigers and
Traitors,” “From the Earth to the Moon,”
“Wild Animals I Have Known.”
© 2026 Gerald Yelle All rights reserved.
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