Nursery Rhyme from Another Century

All over the neighborhood

          sleepwalkers sway

beneath glittering shelves of ice

dressed in cold light,

          confounded by doorknobs,

by the sea in their dreams.

Televisions belly-up in the alley,

          electrons stripped from trees—

Slow fallout of asbestos clasped

in the nursery walls, the grubby

          fists of stars prick

dark like a rash from toxic milk.

And the nursery rhymes

          echo in the dark like radio,

a world talking cheerfully to itself

in the endless repetition

          of a pink cartoon

she begins to recognize

as the subplot of her life,

          the subplot of happiness.

Soon, they say, our houses will be made

entirely of glass. We’ll dance like mannequins—

          stiff and flawless

in the blue, fatal light of television.