The Bread We Eat in Dreams

Down in the dark,

a skinny boy from Ukraine looks up

and his wet, silver neck pulses,

gills like mouths opening and closing. He gurgles:

Did we make it to Venus?

There were supposed to be collectives by now

on Mars and the moon. I would have

liked to see them.

Everyone

is an experiment, devotchka-amerikanka. To see

if a boy can breathe underwater

and talk to the fish.

If a girl can take all her beatings

and still smile for the camera.

It’s 1985 and I’ve never seen the sun.

Sometimes I cry, too.

By the nineties,

the boy under the sea

(Orin, Robert Loren Fleming 1989)

had wealth and a royal pedigree

a wizard for a father and a mother

with a crown of pearls.

I didn’t even recognize him

with his water-fist and his golden beard.

His wife

kept going insane

over and over

like she was stuck in a story

about someone else

and every time she tried to get out