In Your Global Warming Dream

by Michael Mackin O’Mara

I’m taking out the trash or in the process of collecting trash to then take out but the plastic bags have collected in the bottom of the receptacles and there’s a few of them and I distract myself with ruminations about dinosaurs since I’m told and fancifully believe the urban myth that that‘s what plastic bags once were so there’s a few dinosaurs in the bottom of this receptacle all of which I shepherd into a larger receptacle of the 55-gallon receptacle type on wheels (also dinosaur?) and in one of these deflated balloons of a used condom of clear plastic reptiles are fish lots of fish like when a fishing hole dries up and all the fish get concentrated not dead smelly what do I do with this mess but live swimming fish there’s an aquarium of fish in a used condom of a plastic bag and I think I’ve got an aquarium which is to say I have the contents of an aquarium without the actual aquarium in which to put said contents—who the heck threw out all these fish?

and the people that I didn’t know were there pointed to you so I sat down to ask what up with the fish and I looked down first cause that’s how my sentences begin but when I looked up you weren’t there—and the lady with her daughter? or the grown lady with the lady in waiting whatever she looked at me like you’re leaving right? you and your bag of fish? so I left because I’m compliant that way and you were nowhere to be seen but the fish were now a ball of motion in a teacup like snakes coiling or waves churning but all the water was gone, the plastic bag dinosaur was gone just a cup-a-fish and I’m thinking oh look Royal Doulton with the periwinkles but really it’s just an oversized off-white diner style mug

and water I’m thinking but prolly not tap water I could throw them in the lake out back but they’d be sushi before you could say snapping turtle ok then lake water in a new receptacle until I can set up a proper aquarium and that’s pretty much how most of the critters in this house came to be in this house two dogs a cat a bird a snake way too many paleozoics the homeless man on the couch and now well fish.


Michael Mackin O’Mara works for a nonprofit in West Palm Beach, Florida. He is the managing editor of the South Florida Poetry Journal concentrating on audio and video submissions. He has been published by Silver Birch Press and Indolent Books, and his hobbies include photography, videography, and graphic arts

Copyright 2018, Michael Mackin O’Mara


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