I
saw myself for the first time
in a dream last night. It was the
summer
I wanted to be an aerospace engineer,
the summer I had my first
beer,
the summer I worked at a grocer's shop illegally.
I stacked shipment
upon shipment
of cans, all sorts of them - tapioca, tuna fish,
and cream
of mushroom. Every day I walked
past those gap-tooth houses in the gray
morning,
luminous beer cans lining the windowsills.
Perhaps I had stacked
that pack the night before.
Perhaps I was too engrossed to see a swollen
man-
rat swinging that 12-pack up to the register
and paying for it in
dimes.
I awoke to gray sunlight pouring in through
the windowspace, a
skyline of beer cans
looming above the windowsill.