In A Parallel Universe

There are two little girls
in four pig-tails left at the pit-stop

of an abandoned gas-station,
waiting for the high school band

in Kansas of Kuwait—Our Kismet
is passing through a loud sound barrier,

non-chalant as a cereal box in
a church fire, or is it the coldest porridge

left by Goldilocks, on a table where pages
blew out the window, while a train passed through

the Encyclopedia Britannica, volumes A-Z.
Steam whistles, and a red velvet cab car reveals

the desires of a bank teller, or a bald widower,
pronouncing, “There’s no draft to this war!” The band

can go back to football—which is how we pulled
elegy from the Eagle’s beak, or was it effigy?

On the other side of the mirror, we will be stalked
by the lies we told. In a field of pumpkins and urns

a child is weeping with the cows, they stare at us
astute as busboys clearing plates and bowls. Our voices

went home without the key-note speaker, the clouds are
held up by tooth picks—A china shop, we don’t dare enter.